No one likes beets, or so I’ve been told. Raw beets, roasted beets, beet juice (beetroot, to those of you reading in the UK)—they’re just not a very well-liked vegetable, possibly ranking lower than asparagus, Brussels sprouts, even cabbage. I thought my friends and family were just especially picky, but apparently, this is a widespread thing. Really, there’s data.

Although I shouldn’t be too surprised—historically, I’ve always been fairly alone in my appreciation of the ruby-coloured root. My mom, the daughter of Polish immigrants, has always hosted Christmas Eve dinner at my childhood home. The Polish tradition is called Wigilia, and like many other cultures' Christmas Eve proceedings, it calls for a pescetarian dinner. (As a kid, I was told the reason we don’t eat meat is because when Jesus was born, “all the animals came alive.” Fish and other sea creatures are okay to eat, though, presumably because they’re heathens.)

The Wigilia dinner is an opulent one, crowned by baked, Ritz cracker-stuffed shrimp. My mom and I would typically spend the whole day cooking and prepping it for the parade of friends and family who will come through, make a plate, and exchange blessings for the year ahead. Borscht used to be a regular fixture on the menu, but my mom and I eventually realised that we were the only ones who would eat any. After that, it transitioned seamlessly into an easy lunch to fuel us through the cooking.

Borscht—a beet soup of Eastern European origin, which can be thin or chunky and may be topped with dill and/or sour cream—makes for a nice light lunch, and its mildly sweet flavour doesn’t clash with any of the other dishes we’re preparing, and thus, tasting, throughout the day. That versatility is one of the cardinal traits of beets. They’re subtle and earthy, which I’ll admit is food-speak for “tastes a little like dirt.” To me, that’s a positive, but I can understand why some would disagree.

That’s why I was surprised to find beets in another one of my favourite things: beer. Lasting Joy Brewery is just up the river from New York City, where I live, in a village called Tivoli. It opened just last year, launching an impressive core lineup. It’s just four beers, but they manage to cover the bases of classic, staple styles as well as what’s popular right now: a Belgian wheat, a Czech pilsner, a hazy IPA, and—behold!—an English-style Beet Stout. Naturally, I had to try it, and Lasting Joy’s CFO, Matt Brown, was kind enough to drop off a four-pack for me in Brooklyn one weekend before motorcycling back up to the Hudson Valley.

English Beet Stout pours dark brown, with just a faint hint of maroon, not betraying its usually brightly-coloured inclusion. Despite a strong, beety nose, the beet flavour doesn’t smack you in the face upon first sip. What you taste is a rich, earthy, and gently bitter stout, with the vegetal sweetness of the beets creeping in on the finish. The beets are definitely at the beer’s core, but they manage to be subtle and smoothly incorporated.

“I was inspired to use beets to bring the earthiness found in a classic British style stout,” Lasting Joy founder, CEO, and head brewer Alex Wenner tells me. “For balance, I found inspiration in Belgian beer styles that use beet sugar in their fermentation as well.” (For any beet purists out there, it’s worth clarifying that these Belgian styles are a step removed from the beetroot beers we’re talking about—their brewing sugars are derived from sugar beet, which is a relative of the beetroot, but not the same plant.)

Beet stouts aren’t completely unheard of, but they’re not common—as of this writing, a search for “beet stout” yields relatively few results, of which Lasting Joy’s English Beet Stout is the number one. Curious about the inspiration that led them to brew with beets, I inquired as to whether Alex or his wife and co-founder Emily might have developed an appreciation for beets thanks to growing up with an Eastern European heritage as I did. It turns out that the root (ha) of their beet stout is right here in New York State.

“New York farms are the second leading producers of beets in the US,” Emily says “Being a farm brewery, we really wanted to highlight and celebrate New York’s agricultural richness as much as possible.”

“Farm brewery” isn’t just a descriptor, it’s also a term of legal significance. In 2012, New York state passed the farm brewing law, which made it significantly more affordable for small commercial breweries to obtain the proper licence—the only stipulation being that the brewery needs to use a certain percentage (currently 60% of hops and all other ingredients) of agricultural products grown in New York state. It’s a major reason that New York has enjoyed such an explosion of new breweries over the last decade, especially in the artsy and agriculturally rich Hudson Valley.

Today there are dozens of breweries in the Hudson Valley—76, according to Paul Leone of the New York State Brewers Association—and as far as I’ve found, Lasting Joy is the only one to offer a beet-infused style, let alone within their core lineup. Apples are another major New York state crop, and the cider scene here is, unsurprisingly, flourishing. But that’s a no-brainer. In the minds of brewers (and people in general), beets might be more akin to another one of the state’s top crops—cabbage. Which is to say, it’s a somewhat contentious vegetable that doesn’t exactly make for an obvious beverage component.

““Being a farm brewery, we really wanted to highlight and celebrate New York’s agricultural richness as much as possible.” ”

— Emily Wenner, Lasting Joy Brewery

The concept of beets in beer seems natural to me—they’re just a little bit sweet, too mild to be overpowering in flavour, and they lend that gorgeous ruby-red colour to everything they touch. And more abstractly, to me anyway, beets taste like comfort. Their flavour is rich but not challenging, and they instantly make any food or drink feel wholesome, like a mug of borscht on Christmas Eve. Stouts, too, evoke a sense of comfort and nourishment for many, which is probably at least part of why the world’s most popular stout has been nicknamed “mother’s milk.” Beets and stouts make an excellent pair, the sort of rustic, cosy flavours you seek on a cold night. The connection feels intuitive—at least to myself and the Wenners, anyway.

Stout or not, beets are still a fairly rare inclusion in beers of any style. When you perform a search for “beet beer” or similar terms, the top results are recipes for homebrewers (some of which aren’t technically beer at all). Of the commercially available beet beers that do exist, a good chunk of them come from craft breweries in Eastern, Northern, or Central Europe—only a handful hail from the UK or US. The styles, though, are curiously diverse, ranging from sours and saisons to American pale ales (and of course, some more stouts).

For the brave few U.S. breweries who have experimented with beet beers, the risk has paid off. Fonta Flora Brewery in Morganton, North Carolina, won a gold medal at the 2015 Great American Beer Festival (GABF) in the Field Beer category for their Beets, Rhyme, and Life saison, which was actually one of the first beers they concocted when Fonta Flora started up in 2013. Like Lasting Joy, Fonta Flora is sharply focused on working symbiotically with local agriculture, and they credit the saison’s deep red colour to the Detroit Dark Beets they use in the recipe.

“The goal has always been and still is to showcase unique agricultural products in our beers,” Todd Boera, co-founder and creative director at Fonta Flora tells me.

Another southern brewery, Tennessee Brew Works in Nashville, Tennessee, won a GABF medal in the Field Beer category for a beet brew in 2021. Their Farmer’s Beat saison is made with beets from nearby Delvin Farms (Tennessee Brew Works, too, is heavily invested in local agriculture; their barley, among other ingredients, is sourced from Tennessee farms). But the availability of local beets is just one factor—from a brewer’s standpoint, beets are a great ingredient to work with.

“Beetroot has a significant amount of sugar for fermentation, the reddish colour of beets looks awesome in a beer, and the spicy flavour profile of Saison yeast strains complement the earthy characteristics of beetroot,” says Matt Simpson, head brewer at Tennessee Brew Works. In making Farmer’s Beat, Matt also found that beets really blossom as a beer ages.

“As the beer conditions, the earthy notes from the beets fade and mixed berry notes evolve and take over,” Matt continues. “The batch that won a medal at GABF was 13 months old at the time of judging. My favourite aspect of this beer is experiencing how it conditions and changes over time.”

Todd tells me how Fonta Flora has toyed with using beets – both standard red and golden varieties – in other styles, such as IPAs. But it’s no accident that the beet saison has remained in their lineup for a decade: the “earthy profile” of beets was a natural accompaniment to the traditional Belgian farmhouse styles they love.

“Dry, bitter, earthy and soil just sounded like everything we wanted to drink,” Todd says. “Our house saison yeast blend provides some fruity aromatics to the dirt/earth [from the] beets.”

And the deeply saturated red colour that beets lend, naturally, is an attention-grabber. Matt finds that it works “like a shiny fishing lure,” piquing enough curiosity to convince even beet sceptics to give it a try—at which point, he says, most people like it.

““Dry, bitter, earthy and soil just sounded like everything we wanted to drink.””

— Todd Boera, Fonta Flora Brewery

Given all these strengths, I asked the brewers why they thought beets weren’t a more common beer addition, especially given the great diversity of fruits and other adjunct ingredients brewers are experimenting with these days. Part of it, of course, is that beets are just a contentious food. Todd, for his part, doesn’t find it terribly surprising that so few brewers have touched beetroot.

“I recently saw a meme about fast food variety, and it just showed fried chicken sammies from every chain. That is basically craft beer right now, but sub in hazy IPA/kettle sour. Yes, there is a lot being added to beer these days but I would say that it isn't really experimental, or very courageous,” Todd says. “For real, no shade over here, but the ingredients people are using could be mistaken for a candy shop or ice cream parlour.”

Fair enough. If you asked most people to choose between beets and ice cream, they probably wouldn’t zealously go for the root vegetable. Out of context, I wouldn’t either. Brewing with beets is a little more of a commercial and creative risk than using an ingredient that’s near-universally liked.

“In my opinion, there is not much true experimentation happening with unique, cool and culturally significant ingredients,” Todd says. “Potentially with good reason, as I would be the first to agree that beets are definitely a polarising ingredient and we definitely aren't betting our business on the success of a beet beer. But all day long I will reach for a beet saison over a marshmallow one.”

Back at Lasting Joy, Alex Wenner sees a bright future for beets in beer.

“Beets are really more complex than they get credit for. As a root vegetable, they offer incredible insight into local terroir as an expression of the soil they’re grown in,” he says.

Sweet, crowd-pleasing pastry stouts and kettle sours are having a big (and lengthy) moment, and they’ve done a lot to hook new craft beer fans who otherwise might not have dipped their toes into that world. But the use of locally-grown produce taps into the sensory intrigue of connoisseurs as well as the growing movement toward locavore, sustainability-minded eating and drinking—even, and maybe especially, when using a polarising food like beetroot.

“The industry is just beginning to pull from local agriculture and embrace using what grows well in your region,” Alex says. “It’s only a matter of time before more breweries start experimenting with beets.”