Calgary is not, geographically speaking, a tropical destination. It is a city famous for chinooks, for winters that arrive uninvited in October, and for a climate generally more suited to flannel than flip-flops. Which makes it all the more admirable that The Establishment Brewing Company has decided to fight back against geography entirely with Tropicalia, an Imperial Sour built to smuggle a Hawaiian vacation into your glass.
The recipe is not subtle. They took what they call the Hawaiian holy trinity, passionfruit, orange, and guava, and rather than politely suggesting these flavors to the beer, they apparently dropped tonnes of fresh fruit straight into the brew. The result, according to the brewery, is their juiciest imperial sour yet, tart up front, backed by a full and lush body that they describe as transporting you to a warm, moonlit luau. At 8.0% ABV, it is also strong enough that the luau might end sooner than planned if you are not careful.
This is being billed as a late solstice ritual, which is a wonderfully dramatic way of saying "we made a beer to remind everyone that summer exists." Establishment Brewing calls it their secret weapon for dragging summer out of hiding by sheer force of flavor, and frankly, after a Calgary winter, that is a mission statement worth getting behind.
Establishment Brewing is no stranger to ambitious collaborations either. This same week they are also releasing a joint West Coast IPA with Irrational Brewing Company out of Edmonton, a partnership that started with a shared trip to Yakima to pick hops and ended, as these things often do, with two breweries deciding they simply had to make something together. It says something about a brewery's personality when even its serious collaborations sound like they started as a good time that got slightly out of hand.
Tropicalia is available now, and given the ambition on display, calling it merely a sour undersells it. It is closer to a small act of climate defiance in a can, and the kind of beer that makes a Calgary patio feel, for twenty minutes at least, like somewhere considerably warmer.