Brewing For Impact celebrates Brewmaster Garrett Oliver’s thirty year anniversary at Brooklyn Brewery. Garrett collaborated with seven breweries around the world to showcase fonio, a remarkable West African grain that can light the way towards a sustainable and equitable brewing future. Each collaboration will also support the Michael James Jackson Foundation’s scholarship program for BIPOC brewery and distillery professionals. Learn more about Brewing For Impact here and look for more releases throughout 2024.
In the 12 years they’ve been in operation, Jing-A Brewing has established a reputation as an innovation powerhouse and a cornerstone of Beijing’s craft brewing revolution. Situated in the urban sprawl of the nation’s capital, the taproom invites patrons on a flavorful journey through the landscapes of China’s diverse provinces with every sip.
Founders Kristian Li and Alex Acker are passionate about incorporating local crops into their brewing process. Their creations push the boundaries of how beer is traditionally defined, resulting in distinctive and surprising flavor profiles, each accompanied by a vibrant story that pays homage to China’s rich culinary heritage.
Their repertoire of ingredients includes durian fruit – an infamously pungent fruit from the south of China; chen pi, a three-year-old aged tangerine peel only grown in the province of Guangdong; spicy chili peppers from the mountains of Guizhou; and Pu’er tea – an aged, fermented tea harvested from the rolling hills of Yunnan.
“Though the Jing-A modus operandi is bringing new flavors into beer, I’ve got to say, I’m not sure that I would’ve thought to turn to durian fruit as a beer ingredient,” Brewmaster Garrett Oliver remarks.
“We love brewing with local ingredients – that’s part of our ethos,” replies Kris.
Garrett first collaborated with the Jing-A team in 2019 when they launched Forbidden Ops. The collaboration stout was brewed with forbidden rice, an ancient grain with a historically elite status – it was once reserved for Chinese emperors, making it “forbidden” for consumption by the common people.
This project features an ingredient with farther flung roots than ever before: fonio from West Africa. While the team at Jing-A is well-known for their use of culturally and historically significant ingredients, they hope their newest release has an impact on the future. Fonio is a sustainable supergrain grown in desert regions of West Africa. It supports primarily woman-owned family farms, and promotes soil regeneration that gives back to other crops.
Voyage to the West is a fonio-powered spin on a classic West Coast IPA. Though fonio is still foreign to beer drinkers in China, fans of Jing-A will recognize a touch of the brewery’s signature: a nod to traditionally Chinese flavors.
“Fonio produces very tropical flavors like lychee fruit,” Garrett notes. Lychee, though popular in many Asian countries, is native to mainland China.
“A West Coast IPA is a great canvas to showcase that flavor,” Kris adds.”It’s clean and fresh. ABV is 6.2%, with low IBUs. Chinese people don’t like super bitter beers, so we want to make sure that it’s sessionable.”
The story behind the liquid is always important to the team at Jing-A – and this particular story is 600 years old. The name “Voyage to the West” is a reference to the expeditions of Admiral Zheng He from the early Ming Dynasty. The celebrated 15th century explorer made seven voyages overseas in search of treasure, and his fifth and sixth expeditions took him all the way to continental Africa.
Though Zheng He can’t be credited with introducing the fonio to China, Garrett and Kris are happy to take charge. The beer will be released just in time for Jing-A’s landmark 8×8 Festival, a two-day gathering of local and international brewers to collaborate and celebrate. This will be fonio’s inaugural year at the festival, pouring alongside more than 130 other beers from around the world. Garrett and Kris believe this could be fonio’s first-ever introduction to mainland China.
“8×8 is a platform to exchange ideas, make new connections, and build new friendships. This is arguably the first time fonio’s ever been used in a beer in China, so we’re really blazing the trail,” says Kris.
With Voyage to the West, Garrett and the Jing-A team look to highlight how exploring uncharted territories can bring people, cultures, and ideas together.
“In many ways we’re following in the footsteps of the admiral,” Kris reflects. “We’re taking this supergrain from Africa – this new treasure – and introducing it to China for the first time.”
Looking for more stories and beers from Brewing For Impact? Check out Garrett’s work with Maison Kalao, Thornbridge Brewery, Omnipollo, Russian River, and Carlsberg, and stay tuned for more.