One thing I really enjoy about living in Florida is the copious amounts of excellent food available, especially Floribbean cuisine. This mixture of Spanish, native, citrus, and spicy flavors is something I enjoy whenever I can.
And if you go to any good bakery (heck, even Publix has them now), you’ll find an assortment of Caribbean pastries. One of those is a square of flaky pastry goodness, known as the pastelito.
Pastelito is Spanish for ‘pie,’ and you’ll see these pies filled with a wide assortment of goodies. Cream cheese, beef, fruits, the list goes on. One of my favorites is the pastelito de guayaba, or the Guava Pastelitos (Berliner Weisse, 3.5% ABV), as the good people at Coppertail Brewing were nice enough to make into a beer.
Coppertail is based in Tampa’s Ybor City area, so they have excellent pastelitos available close by at any time (La Segunda, anyone?) making this fantastic flavor into a beer should be easy, and they did a great job of it.
The berliner weisse is traditionally sour, and so was pastelitos. But it wasn’t too sour, which made me pretty happy. There’s enough of a tangy kick from some expertly wielded yeast to make the punch noticeable, but it’s still pretty mellow to drink.
And yes, there’s a wonderful guava undercurrent to the beer. Guava isn’t exactly the most outwardly sweet fruit, so it lends itself more to a mature, deep fruity quality. That does pair really nicely with the tang from the beer, and makes the beer quite enjoyable.
It would be interesting to see if Coppertail makes this beer into an entire pastelitos series. No way to know for sure, but they have plenty of places to study close by if they want.
They are more than welcome to send me some of those Tampa goodies if they see to it as well.
Drink Florida Craft,
Dave
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