Leinie's taps into a new trend
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By Candice Novitzke candice.novitzke@lee.net
Wednesday, October 24, 2007 10:17 AM CDT
I consider myself a beer purist. If I have a beer, it’s going to have barley and its going to have hops. There probably won’t be any fruit — but if there is, I want my tastebuds working overtime to detect it.
When I met Tobin Ellis at the Leinie Lodge Tuesday morning, I warned him that I would be skeptical of his beer mixing shenanigans.
Leinenkugel’s brought Tobin, the owner and founder of nightlife consultancy BarMagic in Las Vegas, to Chippewa Falls to share his drink mixing expertise on something that’s been going on for quite some time with the Leinenkugel’s products.
Mixing.
People blend it with everything from other Leinenkugel’s beer, to juice, coffee, hard liquor and just about any other drink ingredient you can think of.
So, Tobin blended me a dessert to jumpstart my tastebuds. Papa’s Apple Pie features apple pie filling, ice cream and graham crackers layered in a glass, topped with molecular Leinie’s Apple Spice foam — a blend of Apple Spice and egg whites charged through a dessert whipped cream maker.
It was great, as far as desserts go. I would definitely make it, if I splurged on a dessert whipped cream maker for roughly $50.
Papa’s Apple Pie, a creation by Tobin himself, is just one of more than 200 mix recipes cataloged online at www.leinies.com/mix. (Be part of the trend and submit your own original mixes.)
There you’ll find all kinds of beer mixing recipes, including the first Leinie’s mixer, called the Honey Bear. It’s a blend of Leinie’s Honey Weiss and Leinie’s Berry Weiss. According to Leinenkugel’s, it was invented in Milwaukee by bartenders at the old Marriott in Brookfield shortly after Berry Weiss made its debut in the summer of 1996.
Leinenkugel’s has carefully watched the progression of beer mixing for many years now, and has decided to go all-out with the trend by adding the drink recipe section to the Web page and begin marketing mix products to consumers.
“Consumers today want something they can call their own,” said Dick Leinenkugel. “And they’re having fun telling us online what their favorite mix is.”
“It’s nice to see there’s a place for beer in the evolutionary palate,” Tobin said. “Hopefully, people realize there’s a lot more going on with beer than just barley and hops.”
Don’t I know it. To get my palate worked up, Tobin mixed me what he calls an “aurora beer-ealis.” The drinker starts by pouring Creamy Dark and Sunset Wheat into a glass in their own quantity preferences — I preferred the version with more Creamy Dark than Sunset Wheat. (The Creamy Dark imparts a bitter, deep flavor. The Sunset Wheat imparts citrus and coriander.)
Then, orange oil is extracted from the outside of an orange peel by holding it over the beer blend and burning it with a lighter — the orange oil ends up on the beer foam.
If there’s going to be any fruit added to my beer, I discovered I prefer essential fruit oils over the actual fruit — oils offer a pure flavor and less beer interference than a piece of fruit does.
“It’s fun to play with beer,” Tobin said. “Beer is a really new area for mixing.”
It’s new even for Tobin, who has a career as a chef specializing in drink mixing. He’s had other beer companies ask him to do a mixing session like the one’s he’s doing for Leinenkugel’s. But he had to turn them down.
“They just didn’t have a product line I could work with,” he said.
Tuesday afternoon Tobin headed to Minneapolis, where he gave more presentations using Leinenkugel products.
Tobin’s recent work with Leinie’s beers isn’t his first experience with it.
“When I was in Atlanta during the Olympics in 1996, it was huge there,” he said of Leinenkugel’s beer. “They almost claimed it as their own hometown beer.”
Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat has really taken off, and is now available in 42 states. An expanded market of Berry Weiss and Honey Weiss is also being planned.
The important thing is to drink what you like, and continue to try new things. I, for one, will be adventurous and give mixes a try if they fit the occasion.
I also appreciate seeing non-beer drinkers giving beer a chance — even if it’s sometimes buried in a drink mix.
DID YOU KNOW?
According to the Brewers Association Web site, www.beertown.org, the craft beer industry Leinenkugel’s is part of has shown a sales increase of 31.5% over the last three years. The U.S. craft beer industry had $4.2 billion in sales in 2006.
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