Tamarillo collaboration

Auckland-based brewery Epic featured in a December Discovery Channel episode of the Brew Masters series which showcased the brewing of a pilot and production batch of their latest beer Portamarillo — a collaboration with the American-based Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. Portamarillo is a beer labelled as: ‘Tamarillo and Pohutakawa Smoke Porter’, an “imperial sorta-porter” and the world’s first tree tomato beer. In the episode, the tamarillo were smoked over pohutakawa woodchips — “a beautiful, herbal, tea-tree” flavour — then blended with New Zealand hops and “a ceremonial bottle of New Zealand water”.