diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index d89c680..1e66164 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ Some reasons why you might be interested:
 * Modify consumer group offsets (e.g., resetting or manually setting offsets per topic and per partition).
 * JSON output for easy consumption with tools like [kp](https://github.com/echojc/kp) or [jq](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/).
 * JSON input to facilitate automation via tools like [jsonify](https://github.com/fgeller/jsonify).
-* Configure brokers, topic and authentication via environment variables `KT_BROKERS`, `KT_TOPIC` and `KT_AUTH`.
+* Configure brokers, topic, Kafka version and authentication via environment variables `KT_BROKERS`, `KT_TOPIC`, `KT_KAFKA_VERSION` and `KT_AUTH`.
 * Fast start up time.
 * No buffering of output.
 * Binary keys and payloads can be passed and presented in base64 or hex encoding.
diff --git a/common.go b/common.go
index 13bbda4..e143a0c 100644
--- a/common.go
+++ b/common.go
@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ const (
 	ENV_ADMIN_TIMEOUT = "KT_ADMIN_TIMEOUT"
 	ENV_BROKERS       = "KT_BROKERS"
 	ENV_TOPIC         = "KT_TOPIC"
+	ENV_KAFKA_VERSION = "KT_KAFKA_VERSION"
 )
 
 var (
@@ -45,6 +46,11 @@ func listenForInterrupt(q chan struct{}) {
 }
 
 func kafkaVersion(s string) sarama.KafkaVersion {
+	ev := os.Getenv(ENV_KAFKA_VERSION)
+	if s == "" && ev != "" {
+		s = ev
+	}
+
 	if s == "" {
 		return sarama.V2_0_0_0
 	}
diff --git a/system_test.go b/system_test.go
index 25f9bab..80017cb 100644
--- a/system_test.go
+++ b/system_test.go
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ func (c *cmd) run(name string, args ...string) (int, string, string) {
 	cmd.Env = os.Environ()
 	cmd.Env = append(cmd.Env, fmt.Sprintf("%s=localhost:9092", ENV_BROKERS))
 	cmd.Env = append(cmd.Env, fmt.Sprintf("%s=test-secrets/auth.json", ENV_AUTH))
+	cmd.Env = append(cmd.Env, fmt.Sprintf("%s=v3.0.0", ENV_KAFKA_VERSION))
 
 	if len(c.in) > 0 {
 		cmd.Stdin = strings.NewReader(c.in)