The Homebrewer’s Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to Making Your Own Beer from Scratch offers a month-by-month primer on making your own beer from the ingredients all around you, and the beer recipes are perfect for those brewers interested in creative ways to use these culinary ingredients in their brewing.
Tomatoes, like apples, have suffered from years of industrial farming that emphasizes color and shelf life over flavor and seasonality. They are also a plant that gives untold rewards when you plant at home and harvest in-season, or when you buy heirloom varieties directly from a farmer.
Unfortunately, tomatoes in commercial beer in the United States have been used in ways that mimic cocktails like Bloody Marys and in combinations like tomato and clam juice. But tomatoes themselves haven’t been considered a fermentable ingredient. Interestingly, one of the more inspiring places to see the tomato’s potential in drink is wine. Anyone who hasn’t had tomato wine may be surprised to know that once the juice has been fermented to alcohol, the result is not like tomato sauce. Depending on the tomatoes used, the wine can taste dry and tropical. Omerto, a winery in Quebec, Canada, claims to be the world’s first commercial tomato wine venture, making wines that range in flavor from something akin to a (slightly more alcoholic) Sauvignon Blanc to a white Port. Omerto uses a blend of heirloom tomatoes, as the flavor is more pronounced and dynamic. Taking a wine-maker’s tack on using tomatoes is the best way we can think of to utilize tomatoes in beer, particularly the emphasis on full-flavored heirloom varieties.