CHICAGO — Revolution Brewing and Garrett Popcorn have been neighbors under the same roof for nine years, and that has led to the inevitable: a Revolution beer made with Garrett popcorn.
When the process began in January, the idea of what to do — brown ale made with Garrett’s renowned CaramelCrisp — came quickly. But how to do it took some time.
Revolution added different sorts of popcorn to the brewing process. It considered different ingredients used in Garrett’s caramel corn. It tried sweetening the beer with various caramel flavors. It tinkered with about a dozen trials, but landed in a simple place: including Garrett’s caramel corn in the earliest step of the brewing process and adding a dose of brown sugar — and that’s it. No further caramel flavoring required.
The result, also called CaramelCrisp, begins to roll out Wednesday, with a broad release across Illinois by Oct. 1.
The ingredients betray a decadent beer: 450 pounds of Garrett’s CaramelCrisp and 1,200 pounds of brown sugar. But both are added early enough in the brewing process that most of the sweetness is fermented away, resulting in a beer that’s surprisingly dry and nuanced, rich with caramel essence and overtones, but only modest caramel-like sweetness. It’s a neat trick.
The packaging relies heavily on Garrett’s branding and language (the beer is called a “caramel popcorn ale” and described as having “creme brulee-like sweetness”), but if a drinker didn’t already know, he or she would be hard pressed to guess the key ingredient. The result is beer first and caramel corn novelty second. And that was the point.
An intensely sweet beer might be OK for a few sips, but few people would want 16 ounces of it, let alone a four-pack, Revolution’s head brewer Jim Cibak said. The sweetness is faintly there, and grows more evident as the beer warms from refrigerator temperatures, but remains entwined with the toasty malt.
“We’re old school in our approach,” he said. “We didn’t want to make a beer that tastes exactly like caramel corn.”
He said he wasn’t even sure the experiment could work due to the popcorn’s butter and fat potentially ruining the texture of the beer. But by including it as a first step, Cibak said, that problem was avoided. It even mingled with the malts to create unique flavors and aromas.
Many breweries would not have been able to resist adding caramel sweetness as a final step, and Revolution did try it. But every version was a letdown, Cibak said, tasting “synthetic and fake.”
“Rather than enhance the beer, it dragged it down,” he said.
He worried Garrett would want a beer more caramel corn than brown ale, but was relieved they did not. Garrett, in fact, was hoping for a beer that would pair with its caramel corn rather than be a substitute.
“It’s a lovely pairing together,” said Kris Penn, Garrett’s vice president of strategic partnerships. “If the beer was too sweet, it would have been too sweet overall.”
Instead of caramel flavor, the beer got a more interesting final touch: a small dose of kosher salt, which both echoes popcorn and adds a subtle, cleansing twist on the palate.
CaramelCrisp is a notable marketing opportunity for both companies; they’ll have co-branded displays at most of Jewel-Osco’s 180 stores, and both the beer and the popcorn brands will be available across the Binny’s chain. CaramelCrisp joins a Planters peanut India pale ale (made in 2018 by Noon Whistle Brewing) and Frango mint stout (made last year by Hop Butcher for the World; Frango is also owned by Garrett Brands) in the annals of Chicago food-beer collisions.
The timing of the beer is no coincidence and, like many things, influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
With sales at its dozens of stores cratering in the early days of the pandemic, Garrett expedited plans to get its cheese corn and cheese-and-caramel mix on store shelves for the first time, which finally happened in May. After years talking about collaborating with Revolution, teaming up finally became timely; the brands could piggyback each other to potentially new audiences.
Early feedback from retailers led Revolution to triple the amount of beer that will be sent into the market, which will be available across Illinois and in Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio. CaramelCrisp will be on tap at Revolution’s Kedzie Avenue taproom and Milwaukee Avenue brewpub Wednesday. Doug Veliky, the brewery’s chief strategy officer, said the beer could become an annual fall release.
The two businesses have been friendly since 2013, when Garrett began renting a space next to Revolution’s Kedzie Avenue brewery for storage. Revolution became Garrett’s landlord when it bought the building in April.
