Beer column: Bad Tattoo’s most popular creations live on with Yellow Dog

There were a lot of very sad craft beer fans, both in the Okanagan and beyond, when Bad Tattoo Brewing announced it would be shutting down just over a year ago.

The Penticton-born brewery was home to a number of beloved beers and some of the best pizza in the valley, and in an instant it was gone.

While the initial news was heartbreaking, the blow was softened a bit when it was revealed that Yellow Dog Brewing Co. would be taking over the space and potentially some of Bad Tattoo’s recipes.

And that has now happened, with two of Bad Tattoo’s most popular re-emerging in 2023 with a Yellow Dog label.

What used to be Bad Tattoo’s Sol Vida Cerveza Clara is now Yellow Dog’s El Perro Cerveza Clara.

What used to be Bad Tattoo’s Los Muertos Cerveza Negra is now Yellow Dog’s Roll Over Cerveza Negra.

If you were a fan of those beers at Bad Tattoo and didn’t know about the reincarnation of these beers until now, I’m happy to be the one to deliver the news to you.

And if you never got a chance to try these beers before the Penticton brewery shut down, you now have another opportunity to give them a go.

Cerveza Clara is a crisp, clean and refreshing Mexican-style lager that Yellow Dog says will have you “dreaming of white sand and ocean waves.”

It’s a light-bodied beer coming in at just 4.4% ABV, making it perfect for hot summer days, but it can certainly be enjoyed at any time of year.

Cerveza Negra is a black lager, which pours as a dark, chestnut-brown coloured beer, but it still has a relatively light body as a lager.

It has the aroma and taste of toasted malts and caramel, with a dry finish that leaves your palate with remnants of dried fruit.

Coming in with an ABV of 5%, it’s still a very drinkable lager but not quite as sessionable as its Mexican lager counterpart.

Whether more Bad Tattoo beers will come back to life in the future remains to be seen, but there are certainly some other great relics that Yellow Dog could revive to much fanfare.

(I could go for a Juice Bomb right about now...just saying!)

Josh Duncan is the NowMedia news director and a craft beer lover. Reach him at [email protected]. His beer column appears every Saturday afternoon in this space.