Boxing Bear Brewing, Slow Burn Coffee team up for Blonde Bearista Sunshine Stout

When it comes to beer collaborations, Boxing Bear Brewing Company and Slow Burn Coffee have made quite the successful tag team in recent years.

“Passion excites other passions. So whenever we meet other people who are just excited about their endeavors as we are about brewing beer, that’s what always sparks these collaborations,” says Boxing Bear co-owner Dylan Davis, who estimates that the brewery has worked with Slow Burn at least four or five times since opening 11 years ago.

“Coffee is something that I’ve always felt like pairs with beer super well anyway,” he added. “You get the same roast character that you get in a lot of beers that you get in coffee. One has caffeine and one has alcohol, which are opposites, but they just blend so well together and you can infuse so many good flavors with coffee.”

This year’s offering is the Blonde Bearista Sunshine Stout (5% ABV, 30 IBUs), which uses Colombia Loma Verde Roast. Slow Burn is known for specializing in single origin coffee and roasting in small batches. For these collaborations, Davis says, unique beans are picked specifically to pair with Boxing Bear beer. As the name indicates, this one has a little different hue than your typical stout.

“Normally when you think stout, you think black beer, very dark, like Guinness or something like that,” Davis said. “But this one packs just those same roasted flavors and same heavy hitting malt characteristics that you get out of stouts, but in a light colored package, which kind of makes it special.

“We do a lot of dry steeping with the coffee, and we do some cold brew infusion. And it really doesn’t impart a lot of color, but it really imparts a lot of flavor to the beer. So this blonde stout is a unique style in that, if you were to drink it blindfolded, you would assume it’s a black beer, but the light color definitely throws you off.”

The Blonde Bearista has been available since early October. The drink is for sale at both Boxing Bear locations on draft only — though it could be canned in future iterations if it returns. Davis expects it to have a relatively quick shelf life on tap.

“All of our coffee beers tend to sell pretty fast,” he said. “So I wouldn’t be surprised if it was gone by the middle of December.

“… We were very, very proud of this beer.”

HOLIDAY SHOPPING: Boxing Bear has plenty of releases planned for the holiday season. To help make shopping easier for Black Friday and beyond, it will be offering a 12 Beers of Christmas case. This will allow gift givers the opportunity to mix-and-match drinks in a special 12-pack to provide some variety under the tree, or in the fridge. “We’re going to be trying to do a lot of fun stuff this holiday season,” Davis said.

GABF: Santa Fe’s Second Street Brewery was the only New Mexico-based establishment to medal at this year’s Great American Beer Festival, which took place in Denver on Oct. 9-11. Second Street’s Rod’s Best Bitter garnered bronze in the extra special bitter category. The beer is characterized, according to the brewery, by a “tasty malt sweetness balanced by a unique combination of PNW Centennial hops and British East Kent Goldings, fermented with a favorite U.K. yeast strain.”