A Brazilian Lager Surfs onto the Colorado Beer Scene
They first met Dado 2,077 miles south of the Equator. He was a craft brewer, a surf junkie, a Pierce Brosnan dopplegänger who spun his global travels into silky tales of adventure. Around a worn round table, the Denver Natives sat transfixed at each story Eduardo “Dado” Bier was revealing.
Yes, he knew about Cerveza Imperial: he ran a Surf Shack/Store on a secluded beach in Costa Rica.
Of course he’s familiar with the creation story around Corona beer- he lived in Ocean Beach, San Diego owning a surfer bus and smuggled Especial up from the Tijuana/Ensenda coast.
As a matter of fact, in Siargao, Philippines, he spent a year or so catching the breaks on Cloud 9 and preferred San Miguel Pilsners over Tiger Beer.
Hours and more than few beers later, Dado paused his retelling of the quest for the perfect wave and divulges that it wasn’t until much later that he embraced his roots, stuffed his wanderlust in his backpack and meandered back to his hometown of Porto Allegre.
“My name is Bier...my grandfathers and their fathers were brewers. When i got back to Porto, my Uncle Georgie asked me to carry on the tradition,” he winked, “it was all just a matter of time.” In 1995 the first Brazilian Artisan Brewery was born: DadoBier.
21 years later, 2,077 miles south of the equator, across the round table, Denver’s newly-formed Blue Ocean Mercantile was pitching a dream: export Dado Lager to Colorado. Disrupt American’s aging love affair with the industrial Mexican Beers. Bring undiscovered Brazil to the Rockies.
A good surfer can read the ocean’s waves before they break, and Dado set his sights on Colorado.
The Liquid Magic
Brazil is the 3rd largest beer drinking country in the world, behind the US and China. The roots trace back to the German immigrants of the 19thcentury- explaining Dado’s last name (Bier), and the country’s passion for good beer. As a largely tropical Country, the brews gradually evolved into the sessionable Light Lagers that are associated with beaches and bikinis.
Dado’s Lager was developed using what he calls “Brazilian Magic”… a closely held cauldron of ingredients that resulted in lagers with flavor and pound-ability. The colors of his beers are richer, refreshment jumps out of the bottle. The first sip is heaven, followed by a balanced “malty-backbone” that gives it the flavor beers from Mexico and Latin America lack. The finish is deceptively clean and crisp- a Brazilian Style Lager that makes you reach for the next Dado before the last tilt of the bottle.
Labels by “Brazil’s Picasso”
While the brews were ready for shipment, the bottles needed a make-over. The dramatic cursive and antiquated crests slapped across the Brazilian labels were about as exciting as an Amish love letter. More importantly- it lacked the verve and vibrancy inherent to Brazil: the uncharted Amazon, vibrant Tucans, the powdery sands of Ipanema and Copa Cabana, sequins in Carnival, late nights of Samba and Bossa Nova, sunshine and thongs, screaming soccer arenas, early morning surfing, the skyline of Rio & dusk on the edge of the Rainforest…
It was only Sandro, nicknamed the Brazilian Picasso, who Dado trusted with the challenge. The Dado’s label is a product of Sandro’s artistic journey to distill--into a beer-label-size image--the essence of Brazil as seen through the prism of the 60’s and the dawn of jet-age travel.
The Crowning Glory
A few months prior to bottling his first exports to America, while shredding in the Italian Alps with his family on vacation, he met a raconteur name Massimo who sheepishly mentioned that he sold bottle caps for a living. Unbeknownst to Dado, Massimo’s Peliconi brand “Ring Pull Tops” were the Ferrari of bottle tops. Back in Porto Alegre, as the packaging date for export was drawing near, Dado was double checking every detail of the bottles when a gift from Massimo showed up. This generous gesture of sample pull tops from the Italian was the perfect way to show off that Brazilian/Italian panache. In test packages that Dado ran, he fell in love with the Champaign cork-esq pop-ing sound when he pulled the top off a Dado. As fate would have it, that happenstance après-ski meeting in 2018, gave rise to Pop Tops making their debut in America riding atop the neck of every Dado beer imported to Colorado.
Making his Mark… from far beyond the expected.
2,077 miles south of the equator, a fiercely independent Dado Bier is ready to carve it’s way into the sales of the industrial beers shipped from south of the border. A few months into the 2019 launch, Coloradans are discovering the Pop Tops, the Picassos, the Magic, and backstory of the newest import from the country whose beers have been missing from the scene. Dados are being nestled in daypacks for the end of a 14er celebration, tucked into ski-bags to bust out after that last run, shared in sunshine that feels better a mile high, popped open on a countdown, and chilled for that last late-night story of those trips taken and the ones still being dreamt up.
Coloradans are always searching for the next adventure…
and 2,077 miles south of the expected, Dado has handed you one.
