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Sufferfest Beer Company is Brewing Up a Better-for-You Kind of Superfood Beer

Throw out your adult vitamin gummies and drink a beer instead. (Kidding, but only sort of.) A new Kölsch beer from Sufferfest Beer Company out of San Francisco is creating beer with superfoods, meaning you can slow clap back at wine-drinking haters who say beer isn’t good for you.

The super ingredient in Sufferfest’s Repeat Kolsch is bee pollen, which has been proven to act as an antifungal, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, and overall immune-system boosting food. Repeat Kolsch is also low-calorie, low-carb, and low-alcohol at 3.5% alcohol by volume, and was created by the fit-minded Sufferfest as a response to low-cal summer beers that are nutrient duds.

Sufferfest founder and CEO Caitlin Landesberg started the company after craving a healthy-ish beer that would quench her thirst after long trail runs. Plus, she wanted a beer that understood her desire for maintaining an active lifestyle, not another cold one promoting sedentary couch days and sitting on a bar stool all night.

Michael McSherry/Sufferfest

Repeat Kolsch is an experiment in active beer, made to be a health-conscious alternative for hops fanatics who don’t want to give up their favorite refreshment but want to turn their ordinary beer bellies into good-feeling, thriving beer bellies. (Ain’t nothing wrong with a beer belly, you do you.)

“We thought of Repeat as an exercise in adding things — more flavor, more nutrition — rather than removing calories and carbs,” says Landesberg. We focused on achieving balance.” The result? A beer that tastes like beer but is healthier.

At 95 calories and 5 grams of carbs per serving, Repeat is still “flavor-centric” and has vitamins, minerals, proteins, lipids, and fatty acids, the company says. Yep, bee pollen is 40-percent protein, is considered by health professionals to have anti-cancer qualities, can regulate your intestines, and contains more amino acids than beef, eggs, or cheese.

Let the Kolsch runneth over!

Sufferfest
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Obviously, drinking a beer laced with superfood isn’t as beneficial as eating pure superfoods, but if you’re going to indulge, it might as well give you a health nudge.

Bad boy brewers Dogfish Head played around with a superfood beer in 2018 called It’s The End of the Wort As We Know It, designed to be a survival beer packed to the brim with nutrients. We’re talking 90% of daily folic acid recommendations and eight times the Vitamin B Complex compared to standard light lagers. Which allows you to conclude that if you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring one food, a smart and satisfactory selection could be beer.

Obscure French brewers, Superfood Beers, also created a 5G Belgian (5.5% ABV) with organic superfood ingredients like ginseng, ginger, and gingko, and England’s Cerne Abbas Brewery released Watercress Warrior, a beer rich in vitamin A, B, C, E, and watercress, which is thought to increase virility.

More than a one-off release, Sufferfest is doubling down on better-for-you beers with its pale ale FKT, brewed with blackcurrants “which carry four times the vitamin C as oranges, and bolster gut and kidney health,” says the company. A dose of 65-plus milligrams of sodium also makes FKT an electrolyte replacement drink that is prime for post-sweat recovery, both physiologically and for the soul.

Research proved beer makes us happier, and if you’re diligent about working out and eating well you deserve a damn pick-me-up.

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Jahla Seppanen
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Born and raised off-the-grid in New Mexico, Jahla Seppanen is currently a sports, fitness, spirits, and culture writer in…
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