A new limited-edition beer is being launched for the Super Bowl this year, complete with an eyebrow-raising ingredient: bear poop.
Columbia Sportswear is collaborating with Breakside Brewery to offer a “taste of the outdoors for game day indoors” just in time for this year’s NFL championship, according to the sportswear brand’s website.
The new beer, named Nature Calls, is made with Bull Run River water from Oregon that is infused with bear poop — collected in Montana from American black bears — during the brewing process. The beer also contains malted grains grown in the Pacific Northwest and notes of honey and huckleberry.
Columbia Sportswear made it clear that despite the unusual ingredient, the beer is absolutely safe to drink.
“When we say engineered for whatever, we mean whatever ,” Joe Boyle, brand president at Columbia Sportswear, said in a statement shared in a press release. “Mother Nature hurls bear poop at us, we'll ferment it into a frosty pint. From the inside of a bear to your mouth — we’re making nature’s crap easier to swallow.”
Scott Lawrence, founder of Breakside Brewery, also noted that the Nature Calls beer is brewed with the “same strict standards” as any other beer the company has made.
“We’ve brewed a lot of beers, but never one that celebrates nature this literally,” Lawrence said in a statement. “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.”
The bear poop-infused beer will launch February 8 at the Super Bowl Players Tailgate in Santa Clara, California. The Super Bowl will take place at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara as the Seattle Seahawks face off against the New England Patriots.
Nature Calls will also be available at select Breakside Brewery locations in Oregon.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that a beer has been made with animal feces. In 2021, Ant Brew, a Finnish microbrewery, used geese poop to make a stout-flavored beer. According to an announcement from the company at the time, goose droppings were “gathered from local parks” in Lahti, Finland, to make the beer.
“The poop is used in a food-safe way to smoke malt to create a unique stout beer,” the company said.
The geese poop-infused beer also came in celebration of Lahti being named the European Green Capital in 2021, and having a “wasteless circular economy,” according to Ant Brew.
