Beau’s is hands down one of the best breweries in the country. They master styles, they experiment in styles, they source ingredients as meticulously as chefs, they’re widely distributed without compromising quality, and they even package their products beautifully. They’ve won 8 beer awards in 2018 alone.

They also put out enough new, temporary beers to keep consumers coming back for more. They’ve just reissued one of those short run beers, and it has a local twist, literally. It is available for a limited time at select NLCs.

Officially named 49° 54°, their “Fogo Island myrrh-smoked gose” was a collaboration with Fogo Island Inn. Chefs Tim Charles and Ian Sheridan of the Inn helped the Beau’s team come up with their recipe for the beer, after the Beau’s gang spent a week foraging the local landscape, and learning about local food and culture from the locals.

The final recipe featured 3 ingredients foraged in fogo: partridgeberries, birch bark, and sea salt. Also, the malts made to brew the beer were smoked with myrrh collected from Newfoundland pine, spruce, and fir.

Beau’s chose to make a gose because the rare style of beer contains salt. Newfoundland is surrounded by salt water, so Beau’s head brewmaster felt a gose would capture the taste of the island well. He was also drawn to the unique taste and acidity of partridgerries.

Label for 49° 54°

Naturally, the beer pairs well with local fare, like a partidgeberry tart, or some cod. Smoked cod specifically. But Beau’s also says to try it with perogies & sour cream as well (why not make it locally made perogies, via Newfound Perogi).

49° 54° pours hazy orange, smells earthy and woody, and tastes like a balance of smoke, sap, brine, and tart wildberries — it’s the heart of a Newfoundland hike, dancing on your tongue.

Diane Hodgins, CFO of Fogo Island Inn and the Shorefast Foundation, says the Inn saw paralells between how they, and Beau’s, operate as an organization. Particularly in terms of getting the community you operate in to be engaged in the growth of your business. So it was Fogo Island Inn and Shorefast who reached out to Beau’s.

As you’ll see in the video below, Beau’s was awfully happy they came. “We could never have created this beer over Skype,” they said at the end of their days-long guided tours and foraging expeditions around Fogo.