Malquerida beer, produced by Damm, with a little help from the world's greatest culinary genuises

The elBulli guys just made the perfect beer for Mexican food

Or Peruvian, Chilean or any Latin cuisine for that matter. It's fresh, red, flavoured with corn and is called Unloved'

Latino food has changed Spain’s eating habits. As the world’s most influential chef, Ferran Adrià told El País recently, “In Spanish restaurants and bars, more ceviche is typically eaten than tripe.”

Many Spanish cervezas were developed for Old World cuisines, and aren’t, in Ferran and his brother Albert Adrià’s opinion, best suited to today’s New World influences. In response the brothers, working with their erstwhile elBulli sommelier Ferran Centelles, have developed Malquerida, a “fresh red” beer for the Spanish brewer Damm.

 

Albert Adrià (second from left), Ferran Adrià (second from right) and Ferran Centelles (far right) toast their new beer
Albert Adrià (second from left), Ferran Adrià (second from right) and Ferran Centelles (far right) toast their new beer

Given the Adrià’s pedigree, you won’t be surprised to learn that Malquerida contains a little more than barley, hops, water and yeast. The trio experimented with mescal, lime, lemon grass, and aniseed, before settling on “the perfect marriage between the red colour of hibiscus and the citric aroma of an orange, the acidity and texture of wheat, along with a touch of corn,” El País reports.

 

A Malquerida bottle with some of its flavourful ingredients
A Malquerida bottle with some of its flavourful ingredients

Many high-brow Adrià creations come with equally high price tags, yet Malquerida – which directly translates as ‘bad luck’ or ‘unloved’, and is the name of a well-known early 20th century play – will retail for around €3 a bottle. We love it already. Don’t forget to pick some up next time you make tacos.

For more on Mexican cuisine get this book; for a more contemporary take, try Enrique Olvera’s Mexico from the Inside Out; for more on Peruvian cuisine get this book; and for a more contemporary take, try Central by Virgilio Martínez; for more on the Adriàs alchemy take a look at these books; and for more on food and beer get Food and Beer.