Beer Sherpa: Porter, Honey, Bees, and the Salience of “Hazy”
Let us consider the curious case of Hopworks’ Beestly. In several ways it seems to be a beer out of time, notably because:
It’s a porter.
It’s a honey porter.
It’s organic.
It’s one of those products meant to make drinkers feel good about their buying choices.
Hopworks Urban Brewery, launched 13 years ago on the strength of its IPAs and urban, bike-y ethos, has always been committed to improving the world. Owner Christian Ettinger was a champion of organic beer back when it was cool—and has remained so long, long after it has stopped being so. (A sad state of affairs, but there it is.) In 2015, Ettinger turned the company into a B Corporation, which legally commits Hopworks to “consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment.” Walking their talk, the brewery has championed long-root agriculture, bicycles, and salmon. Beestly continues in this vein, supporting Save the Bee.
As far as I can tell, the attention directed to them by beer geeks for all this work is roughly 0%. This is curious, because Bart Watson recently made the case that the newest generation of drinkers cares more about what a brewery does than who it is:
“Gen Z will be willing to support local businesses, but they aren’t going to support them just because they are local. This is a generation that wants to connect and know everything about who they are buying from, and as the most connected generation of all time, has the skills to rapidly find out. A McKinsey report … discussed how they will have consumption anchored on ethics: ‘In a transparent world, younger consumers don’t distinguish between the ethics of a brand, the company that owns it, and its network of partners and suppliers. A company’s actions must match its ideals, and those ideals must permeate the entire stakeholder system.’”
Craft beer used to lean heavily into corporate ethics. This was partly a rebuke to big breweries, laser-focused on the bottom line, and also slightly self-serving (look at how green we are!), but in the main it represented an authentic commitment to community. Lately, not so much. Many breweries still try to lead ethical lives, but they aren’t showy about it, and with some notable exceptions the trend overall has tailed off. All of which makes Hopworks look like a brewery from another time. So hey, why not lean into it and release a year-round porter just as the sunshine returns and other breweries are making their lightest beers of the year.
A Luscious Porter
Although honey is an old-school ingredient, sweetness is in. Hopworks might have made a bigger splash with a honey hazy or a honey golden, but I’m glad they chose porter. So few breweries make them anymore, and Beestly is a real treat—and unusual to boot. The word that came to mind after an exploratory sniff and especially a first sip was “luscious”—in the sense of rich and luxurious. I had to check the can to see if it was quite a bit stronger than I expected, but at 6%, it wasn’t.
- Initial brewery review (2008)
- Remaking a flagship (2017)
Beestly’s rich, velvety texture instantly calls to mind its signature ingredient, even though the complex grist of organic malts, including dabs of melanoidin and caramel, are the more likely source. Honey wafts from the nose and presents a full, sweet note that infuses the beer right until the end. That’s when the layered roastiness asserts itself, drying the beer to a crisp, clean finish. At that moment you realize the roast was there all along, the canvas on which the honey had painted its sweet top notes. Despite its lusciousness, Beestly is moreish, and I polished off a can in no time.
The experiment really interests me. Will drinkers care a B Corp brewery has released an organic beer that supports bee habitats? Does porter have legs in a hazy market? And especially interesting: will Gen Z chart a new direction in flavor that leads away from the fascination with hops? I hope so.
As a chaser I offer you this photo of a can of Zwickelbier Pils that Radeberger sent this week. See if you can tell how the folks from Germany’s largest beer group mean to appeal to American drinkers.