Solar Comedown Is Timed to the Equinox, Not the Month

Black Spruce Brewing Company has a beer it brings back once a year, and the trigger is not a month on the calendar. It is the equinox.

Solar Comedown, the Fairbanks brewery's hazy double IPA, returns to the taps on Friday, September 18. Black Spruce describes it as full-bodied with notes of peaches and papaya, and says it is always a highlight of the brewery's autumn. The can lists it at 8.0 percent in a 16-ounce format.

Peaches and papaya is a slightly unusual pair of notes to lead with. Most hazy double IPAs are sold on citrus or on the sharper end of tropical fruit, where mango, passionfruit and grapefruit do most of the talking. Peach and papaya sit somewhere softer. Both are muskier and lower in acidity, and both read as round rather than bright. That lines up with the full-bodied description the brewery puts directly next to them. At 8 percent there is enough malt weight and alcohol underneath to carry fruit in that register without the beer thinning out beneath it.

The label follows the name. A radiating sun hangs over a range of orange mountains, with small figures scattered down the slope below, in a palette that runs from pale blue at the top to deep red at the bottom.

The timing is doing real work here. Black Spruce is a sponsor of this year's Equinox Marathon, which runs the day after the beer lands. The brewery says its beer, cider, hard seltzer and hop water will all be at the awards ceremony for the race, and the taproom opens at noon on Saturday for anyone coming off the course. La Cubanita is parked outside that day. The Spice It Up truck takes the Friday shift, from 4pm to 8pm only.

A beer at this strength with this much soft fruit behind it would sit well against something salty and fried, which is roughly what a person wants after a long run anyway.

Solar Comedown is available on tap and to go from the taproom while supplies last.