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| Image courtesy of Priory. |
Priory Beer Dinners & Collab Brews has announced plans for its next beer dinner, with the group set to team up this time around with Celestial Beerworks of Dallas.
As always, the Priory team collaborated with the brewery beforehand to create a recipe using a unique culinary ingredient not typically seen in modern-day beer. In this case, the ancient grain fonio adds to the foundation for a hazy IPA, meaning there is an old school meets new school kind of coupling at the core of this partnership.
Fonio is a type of heritage millet grain grown in West Africa and has been cultivated for over 5,000 years, making it Africa’s oldest cultivated cereal crop. It has a small grain structure similar to quinoa or couscous, but much smaller.
What’s truly unique about this grain is that it needs very little water to grow and can be harvested multiple times per year. This makes fonio very versatile and sustainable, especially in arid climates. Fonio is more well known in culinary circles, having only been used in the beer world in the last few years, primarily thanks to the efforts head brewer Garrett Oliver, from Brooklyn Brewery of New York.
According to a press release, fonio was added directly into the mash, which was hopped with Rakau hops from New Zealand to create a fonio hazy IPA. The hops will predominantly lend a fruity character with notes of apricot, peach and mango to the beer, while fonio will add a passionfruit-like flavor once fully fermented. These flavors combined will create a fruit-forward aroma bursting with notes of tropical fruit, and a punchy bite with notes on stone fruit on the tongue.
As for the beer's name, 'Ancient Future' relays back to the ancient roots of fonio while looking forward to its sustainability in a world where natural resources are becoming increasingly more valuable.
For the Ancient Future Beer Dinner, coming up on July 15th at Celestial Beerworks - The Satellite, Chef Ben Walter of Priory has designed a four-course menu for the evening, including fonio directly into some of the dishes themselves. Tickets for the event are $85pp and may be purchased at https://www.priorybeer.com/events/ancient-future-celestial-beer-dinner.
