A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but will a beer made of something else taste as good? Well, a young brewer from Mexico believes so and has made a type of pale ale with Bamboo.
According to an article on the Phys org website, the young brewer spent a few months in China to broaden his knowledge of bamboo and decided to bring a bamboo beer to the craft beer market.
The beer is actually a kind of wheat beer supplemented with bamboo. But it does seem not to contain barley malt, the main malt of beers.
Adding alternative sources of sugar to beer wort is not new, many beers in Mexico are supplemented with corn and many in Asia are supplemented with rice but adding bamboo to the mix does seem pretty novel.
The beer was described as “a brown Ale beer (highly fermented), refreshing, spicy, fruity and herbal final flavor”.
I think everything except herbal sounds good….