This Week On Tap: Flat12’s Cucumber Kolsch

My dad taught me to mow the lawn the summer before my freshman year at Bloomington High School North (go Cougars). That summer I spent my days playing football, lifeguarding at an outdoor pool, and cutting the grass of my parents’ small but impossibly hilly yard. That was back when we had insufferably hot summers from May to September, where your shirt clung to every inch of your torso, camps instituted “No Running” rules and mandatory water breaks, and you had to mow the lawn at least twice a week or eventually be swallowed into the long grass.

I was only in my early teens then, and I don’t know why I would have understood this (and it was a long while before I partook), but I understood then the term “lawn mower beer.” That crisp lighter beer low in alcohol. Just typing that phrase has me thinking about running a cold beer across my forehead in between breaks of dumping the bag and running the mower up and down hills, over molehills, and around noisy dogs. I know you’re thinking about it too, aren’t you?

Flat12’s Cucumber Kolsch is a weird beer, but, that’s okay, because it seems like it was brewed for those kind of days. It pours bright yellow and clear like a carbonated watered-down lemonade, and is as light on the tongue as Disney Radio is on the Pantera. The cucumber is unmistakable, and it at first was so pronounced that it caught me off guard. So much so that I thought it was too much for me. But it is 2015 after all, so I try to be as open as possible to everything in my life, and I went back for more. I had a bottle of the Cucumber Kolsch the other day on my balcony after a short run, in weather that nearly matched those early days of my mowing career, and it clicked.

Flat12’s website notes the beer as having “lager qualities owed to pilsener malt and cold fermentation,” qualities that are noticeable. Up front, Cucumber Kolsch hits like a regular light beer, until it hits the back of your tongue and the cucumber announces its presence. Next time you’re wrapping up a lawn job, sweating out by a pool, or craving a cucumber, give the Cucumber Kolsch a go.