A Brewery Made a Candy Corn Beer! Just Like a Lot of Other Breweries!
Ask any snooty jerk who wants to feel smarter than you, and that person will tell you that though Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the lightbulb, he is but one person who contributed to its ultimate development. This concept holds true in a lot of things in this world… like, for instance, candy corn beer. The past week, the Wisconsin-based brewery Westallion Brewing Company has gotten lots of publicity for releasing a candy corn beer, fittingly named Candy Corn Cream Ale. Even Stephen Colbert took a jab at the new brew on Twitter. Clearly it’s a fun beer for the Halloween season—though to what extent it’s newsworthy is up for debate.
Call me a snooty jerk, but you don’t have to look much further than the beer rating app Untappd to see that, though not common, candy corn beers are plentiful. For instance, Urban Growler Brewing in St. Paul, Minnesota – not far from Westallion’s home of West Allis, Wisconsin (so that’s where they got the name from!) – has been making its Candy Corn Imperial Cream Ale “brewed with 65 pounds of candy corn, making it smooth and strong with notes of caramel and a touch of sweetness,” since 2014. Nearly 600 people have rated the brew.
And that’s just the most popular candy corn beer. Colorado’s Dry Dock Brewing first tried its hand at its own Candy Corn Cream Ale back in 2016. Two beloved Florida breweries—Cigar City and J. Wakefield—have brewed a Candy Corn IPA in the past. You can find multiple entries for different candy corn-accentuated stouts. A brewpub in California called The Mason Jar Brewing Company even makes a Belgian Tripel that’s brewed with 15 pounds of candy corn. And that beer actually has a cool name: Candy Cornholio!
Just quickly going down Untappd’s list, it appears that at least 50 commercially available candy corn beers have been brewed in the past. That’s half way to 100.
None of this is to imply that Westallion’s Candy Corn Cream Ale isn’t any good or a worthy addition to this cannon of Halloween candy corn beers. It sounds quite nice for what it is. “We created a cream ale using lactose sugars to keep some sweetness, but added Simcoe hops to create a bit of a bite and a balance (and maybe help remind us that it’s still beer?),” the brew’s own Untappd description states. In general, the ratings aren’t bad for such a strange style. And in their tasting, the Milwaukee Record described the cream ale as “actually pretty subtle. In fact, it’s slightly bitter, and we found it to be an all-around balanced and tasty beer.”
What I’m saying instead is directed to the media: I know candy corn beers are fun, but if you think it’s such a crazy creation that it’s newsworthy, you really need to spend less time at the news desk and more time out drinking.
