Beyond Beer

Chimay makes cheese.

 

I chiMay just need to go searching for this! Our house loves all things cheese.

*Found it for a descent price too!*

 

Was at a new jersey brewery, south 40 and I believe it was there i got some dog treats. They made them from leftover mash and my dog loved them. Have seen other breweries do this as well

 

We do as well. I love the beer but my personal taste was not so much for the cheese. My wife and I tried it with plain wafers and Chimay Blue, think we tried it twice, just wasn’t our flavor. But we do like beer and cheese, it can be a meal.

 

cheddy topper cheese as well. As good as the beer!

 

There are a few breweries here in Michigan that also have a distillery, and they are making hand sanitizer because of the need for protection from those nasty COVID germs and the shortage of independent brands of sanitizer when COVID first started. I don't know if they're still making the stuff or not since the pandemic seems to be winding down now.

 

I think New Holland is the only sanitizer product that I've actually seen, others I have only read about but don't recall names.

My doctor's office uses a product that smell very strongly of tequila, but they put it into a generic pump bottle so there is no chance of seeing a manufacturer's label. I didn't ask for a source name, but it made me wonder if some micro-distillery was using the real stuff before cutting it with water to maintain the required ABV for use as a sanitizer.

 

"Cut it" ? The FDA suggested "at least 60% alcohol" for hand sanitizer, that'd be +120 Proof. I imagine most commercial Tequilas are under that (but have no idea what the final distillation abv is).

 

Ranger Creek here in San Antonio is also a distillery. Their whiskey isn’t bad.

 

My understanding of the distillation process is that the alcohol level that comes from the process approaches 100% (200 proof) depending on the efficiency of the system and impurities that get into the final liquid. Then the liquid is cut with water to reach the desired proof of the final product, usually around 80-90 proof (40-45 percent abv) or 60 % for hand sanitizer. Is my understanding wrong?

(Sorry to get off topic, folks.)

 

I would think that most of these things are either licensed by the brewer, co-branded with the actual producer of the goods, or outright co-packed by/for the brewery. Dogfishhead - they had sausages out in the market and they were damned good, but they sure as heck weren't making them at the brewery. I've seen lots of cheeses that say "made with" and a few carrying the brewery logo, but again they aren't being made at a brewery - cheese especially. The equipment and processes are quite different, and the regulations are on a different planet versus the typical brewery. Of course, a decent sized brewery would be able to buy the capability. It can't be highly profitable (CPG is pretty low margin), but it does create visibility for the name in a different consumer space.

I've even seen bar soap and scented candles with a beer brand on it - doubt those are being made in a brewery. And a lot of these things seem ephemeral - the DFH sausage, man we ate a ton of them not because DFH but because they were great on the grill. The shark logo got us to try them on a what the hell, but if they had sucked we would have been one and done, have a nice day. We've had some "made with" XYZ beer cheeses that were heinous, and some that were awesome. Product development isn't always "mix this and that and it's gonna be super delicious" - it's a two edged sword. There is always the risk that there could be something out there (maybe codeveloped or licensed or whatever) with your brand logo stuck on it that is a lousy product. But I do think the point of the whole thing is brand visibility and recognition, not necessarily creating a huge revenue stream.

One cool thing is the spent grains - a few have jumped on this (pet food and people food) and were making it work at least until C-19 struck. One local young entrepreneur I ran into at a Whole Foods started with a few hundred pounds a week making crackers and snack bits that were pretty tasty. He did say it was tough as the scale increased - managing the spent grain before it grew mold was a real problem. It was obvious that he hadn't really thought things through as far as supply chain/production went (tried to go too big to fast - intentionally or not). That's not really extending anybody's brand from the brewery perspective (unless the product said "made with Brewery X Spent Grain"), but it's "up-purposing" a byproduct, and I've seen quite a few "mom and pop" (or brewer's relatives) outfits making spent grain bread or pet treats (hopefully hop free) at cottage industry scale directly tied to a brewery.

 

They’ve got a line of Smooj as well.

 

There used to be a brew pub locally that made flour for their pizzas with spent grains. The beer was OK but the pizza was pretty good.

 

Came here to say the same. Love all the Chimays, and I was a cheese lover, but even with multiple tries I found the cheese unpleasant.

 

I'm sorry, but that sounds godawful. New ideas aren't always good ideas.