Release: Don Prickles Prickly Pear Kölsch

As part of our San Diego Homebrew Summer program, a dozen local breweries are producing recipes from local homebrewers at their breweries during the sunny season. The next to debut will be Don Prickles, a Kölsch infused with prickly pear. This summer-geared refresher appealed to the frequent fruiters at Embolden Beer Co. / New Motion Beverages, who became the second local brewery to select a recipe from homebrewer Eli Palma as part of SD Homebrew Summer (with the other being Bear Roots Brewing in Vista). Don Prickles will make its debut on tap and in four-packs of 16-ounce cans at Embolden’s tasting room tomorrow, July 31. Figure that locale into your weekend plans, and scroll down to get background on the two-timer who created this beer and how its recipe was converted from its homebrew format to work well on a 15-barrel brewhouse.

Don Prickles | Prickly Pear Kölsch

Commentary from Embolden Beer Co. / New Motion Beverages Director of Brewery Operations Cody Morris

We had a blast brewing with Eli for sure, and we are super-excited to release this beer. We kept Eli’s grist, ratios and fermentation schedule almost identical. The major change was that, for his homebrewed version of this beer, Eli harvested and processed all the prickly pear from his father’s property east of Alpine. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t make sense for us to try to replicate on a production scale, so we were lucky enough to secure some great-tasting prickly pear puree from one of our fruit suppliers, and we added it all post-fermentation instead of in stages like Eli’s original recipe. He had some on the hot side and at multiple stages of the fermentation and cellaring process, but we wanted the fruit and color to shine, so he gave us the green light to add it all post-fermentation. We had a great time working with hi to make this great beer happen!

Q&A with homebrewer Eli Palma

How did you get into homebrewing?

I grew up backyard brewing with my father and making bad kit batches throughout high school. I started taking it seriously about 16 years ago, slowly building and upgrading my equipment from various configurations, up to the point where I’m at now with a 20-gallon Spike Brewing electric system.

What led you to submit this particular recipe for consideration?

I get most of my brewing water from my family’s ranch well out east in Japatul Valley. While filling containers one day, I noticed that one side of the hill had tons of beautiful, plump prickly pears just getting devoured by birds or rotting on the ground, so I decided to harvest as much as I could to see if I could come up with a recipe that would match its hard-to-pinpoint, subtle flavors. I settled on a Kölsch-style beer for its delicate balance of yeast character and malt, which, to me, lets all the subtle, berry- and watermelon-like flavors of the prickly pear fruit shine without any one flavor hitting a sour note, so to speak.

How did it feel to have not one but two of your recipes selected to be brewed by local breweries as part of San Diego Homebrew Summer?

I was stoked and it seemed a bit surreal that two out of the two recipes I entered were selected! However, the excitement quickly turned to trepidation. I was uneasy about how the scaled-up versions would translate. What if they sucked?! Luckily I was in good hands. I’d actually been telling friends not to sleep on Embolden before the Homebrew Summer competition. I was really digging the beers they were putting out. So when they selected my recipe, I was stoked and knew they would do it justice!

How was the brew day with Embolden?

There are so many reasons I enjoyed brewing with Cody and the gang at Embolden. Being a part of their brew process, dialing in water additions, the “sampling of beers” while waiting for knock-out, meeting an awesome, humble brew squad. But if I had to pick my favorite thing, it was seeing how well the whole crew meshed with one another to get the final product done. The guys were really dialed in and glossed through the brew day like a well-oiled machine. Brewing that day at Embolden made me feel like I was part of a winning NASCAR pit crew. Thanks, guys!