Here are a few things that a reasonable person might be fond of: Pizza. Beer. Local food. But mash them all together, and the combination — locally produced pizza-flavored beer — suddenly sounds less than reasonable. It sounds, actually, kind of gross.
And yet, this is a thing. Back in 2006, Tom and Athena Seefurth, of Chicago, had an abundance of fresh tomatoes and garden-grown basil and oregano. For some inconceivable reason, they thought they would use those ingredients to brew beer. And thus, Mamma Mia! Pizza Beer. A beer that tastes like pizza.
Well, kind of. The Onion’s A.V. Club found, upon tasting, that mostly pizza beer resembles beer beer — at least on the way down.
In spite of showy displays of sniffing and swirling, the overwhelming first reaction was along the lines of, “Huh, tastes like beer.” Further sipping and swishing gradually revealed subtle undertones that can only be described as “vaguely Italian-y,” and subsequent burps affirmed that there was, indeed, pizza in this beer.
So, it’s a beer that simulates the experience of having eaten a pizza. A pizza that disagreed with you and made you burpy. And you don’t even get to eat the pizza. Great.
But this beer is locally brewed. And therefore it must be good. As the Chicago Sun-Times reports:
This fall, the couple worked out a deal to have some of their items stocked in Jewel-Osco stores in South Elgin and St. Charles by 2013. It’s part of the grocer’s new hyper-local program, which allows budding local businesses to sell their products directly to the chain without having to go through a distributor.
Yes! Please. Sell this locally. As locally as possible. We are perfectly content for the evils of national distribution to leave this one right where it started.
