You might think you’ve had s**t beer before, but I can guarantee — never like this. In the lead up to “the Big Game” (it’s the Super Bowl, sue me) Columbia Sportswear partnered with Portland’s Breakside Brewery to tee up a debut brew — Nature Calls — that fits in with the company’s “Engineered for Whatever” slogan.
It’s not the first time the beer industry has dipped its toes in the outdoors. Busch Light launched decked-out camp koozies and even built a fishing hole in one lucky winner’s yard. And a bunch of ragtag Minneapolis bikers once launched a PBR into space — and filmed it!
But where those ideas merely toyed with the world outside the beer, Columbia opted instead to bring the outdoors into the beer. And what better way to do that than by hucking loads of literal bear s**t directly into brew process?
“When we say engineered for whatever, we mean whatever,” Columbia Brand President Joe Boyle said. “If Mother Nature hurls bear poop at us, we’ll ferment it into a frosty pint. From the inside of a bear to your mouth — this beer is the sh*t, and we’re making nature’s crap easier to swallow.”
The result is a lager made with actual bear scat added in with other ingredients as part of the brew process. The brand even tapped former NFL stars Daunte Culpepper, John Kuhn, LeSean McCoy, and others to star in an appropriately titled ad.
Columbia ‘Nature Calls’ Bear Poop Beer
I know what you’re probably thinking: “Are you $#%&ing kidding me?”
No. Once Columbia set its sights on poop pints, it pitched the idea to Breakside Brewery to see if such an idea was even possible. To their credit, the folks at Breakside did not immediately hang up the phone and call the CDC.
“We’ve brewed a lot of beers, but never one that celebrates nature this literally,” Scott Lawrence, Breakside founder, said. “When Columbia came to us with the idea to use bear poop, we thought they were joking. Turns out, they weren’t — and now we’ve got the wildest beer in America and maybe the world. It’s crazy, it’s fun, and honestly… it tastes great.”
And right about now, you might be asking, “No seriously, are you $#%&ing kidding?”
The answer is still no. According to Columbia and Breakside, the scat for Nature Calls lager is “collected trailside in Montana from the American black bear,” then mixed with malted grains from the Pacific Northwest, honey, and huckleberry, and brewed with water from the Bull Run River in Oregon.
Is This Even Safe?
Breakside confirms that the beer is 100% safe to drink and brewed “under the same strict standards as any other Breakside beer.”
Believe it or not, the concept of a beverage brewed with animal droppings is not unprecedented. Coffee lovers pay top dollar for Kopi luwak, a coffee harvested from beans that have been eaten and excreted by the civet (an animal in Asia and Africa that looks like an AI-generated image for “raccoon-leopard”).
And if we’re being honest, all beer is really part of a fermentation process that relies on the “byproducts” of other creatures. So lighten up, live a little.
Where Can I Drink This S**t?
Quantities of this one-of-a-kind beer are extremely limited (picking up bear crap is a lot of work). Nature Calls debuts today at Breakside’s seven Portland-area brewery locations, and will be part of the Super Bowl festivities at the Players Tailgate party in Santa Clara, Calif., on Feb. 8.
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