Name: Ebb & Flow
Brand: Fruition Brewing
Availability: InStock

Fruition Brewing has made a beer with the aquarium down the bay.

Ebb & Flow is a tropical pale ale brewed in collaboration with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Fruition is framing it as a benefit beer. The brewery says that with every Ebb & Flow it is giving back to the ocean, supporting conservation and the research the aquarium carries out. The aquarium is a nonprofit institution, and research and conservation programs are a core part of what it does.

The geography here is not incidental. Fruition's brewery and kitchen sits on East Lake Avenue in Watsonville, at the northern end of Monterey Bay, roughly half an hour around the water from the aquarium's home on Cannery Row. When the brewery calls the bay its beloved big blue backyard, it is being literal.

The can leans into the partnership. It is printed in deep teal and patterned edge to edge with silhouettes of what lives out there, among them fish, crab, sea star, jellyfish and kelp, with the aquarium credited underneath the beer name. The brewery's own release photograph sets the can on wet sand with the surf running up around it.

Cans and kegs start flowing from the Watsonville taproom on Friday, August 28, with limited distribution to local accounts the week after.

Editor’s Take

Benefit beers usually declare their good intentions in six-point type on the back of the can and then get on with being an IPA. This one is wearing the cause. The whole tin is patterned edge to edge in silhouettes of the things the money is meant to help - fish, crab, sea star, a jellyfish or two - so you end up holding a small inventory of Monterey Bay while you drink to it.

Then somebody went and photographed it by setting the can down in the actual surf and waiting for the foam to arrive, which is either admirable commitment or one very cold ankle. What I like is how local the whole gesture is. Watsonville is about half an hour around the water from the aquarium's front door. This is not a brewery adopting a distant cause it saw in a documentary, it is a brewery buying a round for the neighbours. A tropical pale ale, mind, for a bay whose water is famously bracing. Drink it on the beach and you get both temperatures at once.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Ebb & Flow Is a Benefit Beer Brewed With the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Fruition has brewed a tropical pale ale with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a benefit beer supporting ocean conservation and research. Cans and kegs start pouring at the Watsonville taproom on Friday.

Source & Editorial