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I love food and get a lot of my ideas from chefs, especially when I travel since I eat out a lot in new places. I look to food for a lot of my inspiration. It’s like a beer incubator and we do some crazy things. I work with a great team of people and we have our own microbrewery we call the Research Pilot Brewery. How do you come up with these creations?Ī: I’m very fortunate. Q: In addition to the Belgian White, you brewed a ‘smores beer (called Campfire Wheat) that was well received by the judges Draft Magazine, a Honey Bourbon Cask Wheat, Honeycrisp Apple Wheat, Raspberry Wheat, Lemon Shandy. When we tasted the beer, we all found it was exactly what we were looking for. We did a lot of experimentation in our pilot brewery with barely malt, wheat malt, citrus and we found a totally cool flavor essence that has all the flavors of a fresh pretzel. Every day when leaving the brewery, you can smell two things: the beer from the brewery and fresh baked pretzels. Louis and we wanted to brew something that was part of St. There’s this place across the street from the brewery that makes these wonderful pretzels.
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We use the best ingredients, and always brew with wheat malt and some type of citrus. There’s a couple considerations we have for any Shock Top beer. Q: How do you brew a beer that tastes like a pretzel?Ī: Let me tell you the background behind it. I’ve always wanted to do something creative and try new things and jumped at the chance to take this job.Ī: I’m going to date myself. It took a lot of hard work, and probably took a little bit of luck but I’ve been brewing for a long time, ever since I left college. Q: How did you become the Head Brewmaster at Shock Top?Ī: A lot of begging, a lot of pleading. Let's find out more about the driving brewing force of Shock Top. And yes, I've enjoyed a couple of her Shock Top Belgian Wheat's last fall watching Ohio State football games with friends. She graduated from The Ohio State University in 1992 with a degree in Food Science, three years after I started graduate school at another department in 1989. It turns out Jill and I went to school together for three years. I found her to be engaging, passionate about brewing, with an infectious enthusiasm for creating new beers. If Shock Top is part of the evil empire, then Jill Vaughn makes for a terrible Darth Vader. As part of this promotion, Shock Top approached me with an opportunity to interview Jill Vaughn about Twisted Pretzel Wheat and her other beers and I took this opportunity to do so. They're embarking on a tour to attend over 400 beer festivals this year and at many of them will be pouring Twisted Pretzel Wheat, which is not available in stores. Undaunted, Shock Top keeps reaching out to introduce their beers to the craft beer drinking public.
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It's even more galling now the A-B is seemingly trying to beat craft brewers at their own game with the Shock Top brand. A-B earned a reputation of being the "Evil Empire" from their long history of aggressive sales tactics targeting craft breweries. You'll find her videos talking about her various brewing creations such as Shock Top's Honey Bourbon Cask Wheat and special release Twisted Pretzel Wheat Of course, A-B has long used women to promote their beer, but as eye candy in a swimsuit, not as company leaders thoughtfully discussing their creative inspirations.įor all its good intentions Shock Top can't totally escape a certain guilt by association with A-B and is viewed with much wariness and at times, outright derision in the craft beer community. Shock Top has gone on to brew various riffs on the tradition Belgian Wheat Beer style, much like Molson Coors's highly successful Blue Moon brand.Īs part of this new focus on the beer itself, much of Shock Top's marketing features Jill Vaughn, Shock Top's Head Brewmaster. That success convinced A-B to brew it year around and they renamed it Shock Top. It won gold in 2006 and silver in 2007 at the North American Beer Awards. It was formed in 2006 as a seasonal brew called Spring Hill Spiced Wheat. It's safe to assume that as craft beer emerged as a force that could no longer be countered by slick ad campaigns, A-B finally realized they needed to do something different. It made sense not to bring up the actual beer they were selling because when you got right down to it, it was pretty bland, watery and uninspiring. A-B is long known for selling beer using animated frogs, simply showing people having good times at parties holding drinking their beer and most recently using an absurd stunt featuring a ping-pong playing Arnold Schwarzenegger. It hasn't always been that way with Anheuser-Busch, (A-B), the parent owner of Shocktop. Give Shock Top credit for having the audacity to actually talk about their beer.