A famous outdoor clothing brand from Oregon has teamed up with a no less celebrated Portland brewery to produce what may become the world’s most curious lager: a beer infused with bear droppings and aptly named Nature Calls.
One might rightly wonder how Columbia Sportswear and Breakside Brewery came up with the idea and mistake it for a scatological prank. The idea, however, mirrors the logic of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT), a medical process where healthy microbes can act as a life-saving treatment for severe gut infections. While Breakside’s lager is not medicinal, it certainly capitalises on the public’s growing fascination with the microbiome, albeit with a much more “refreshing” finish.
The limited-edition beer was unveiled as part of Columbia’s humorous marketing campaign, Engineered for Whatever, which celebrates clothing designed to handle anything the outdoors might throw at its wearers. The launch coincided with Super Bowl promotions earlier this year, when Columbia’s vice-president, Joe Boyle, praised Breakside’s “excellent beer” and its willingness to experiment. As Boyle put it, “If Mother Nature hurls bear poop at us, we’ll ferment it into a frosty pint.”
When the outdoor giant first approached the brewery, which is renowned for its award-winning IPAs and Pilsners, the team initially thought it was a prank.
“When Columbia first mentioned the idea,” recalled Breakside’s founder, Scott Lawrence, “we thought they were joking.”
Once they realised it was no joke, the team decided to embrace the challenge. The result is an “easy drinking, low calorie lager with flavours you might humorously associate with a bear’s diet: huckleberries, plants and honey.”
What makes it unusual is the water used for brewing. Scat from Montana black bears is added to the Bull Run watershed supply and then undergoes a rigorous, certified reclamation process. This advanced system removes pathogens such as Salmonella at a molecular level, leaving ultra-pure water to serve as the brew’s base. This is similar to the recycled, treated water used by sustainable breweries worldwide.
“The water is filtered very thoroughly and made safe for consumption before we start the rest of our brewing process,” the brewery explains.
Bull Run’s forests are home to a remarkable diversity of wildlife, including reptiles, amphibians, fish, and, of course, black bears. The bears’ droppings are particularly nutrient-rich due to their diet.
Nature Calls itself, however, is far more conventional in flavour than the concept might suggest. Brewmaster Ben Edmunds describes the recipe as a blend of Idaho malted barley, low-colour wheat and corn, finished with honey and huckleberry syrup after lagering. With low hop bitterness, pronounced minerality, and carbonation, Edmunds says the beer “has the lightness of a seltzer across the back of the palate.”
While the concept may sound revolutionary, it is not entirely without precedent. Breweries in Finland and Iceland have experimented with similarly unconventional ingredients, including beers linked to animal digestion processes.
Nevertheless, few marketing campaigns have embraced the wilderness quite so enthusiastically, and one cannot help but wonder how the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears might have unfolded had such a beverage existed. Faced with porridge that was either too hot or too cold, she might have opted for a glass of Nature Calls instead and found that the bears had already perfected the recipe.
