Drink-a-Pint

Pizza and beer taste great together, but what about pizza beer? If you’re in the Illinois area and feeling a little adventurous, you can find out for yourself with Tom Seefurth’s Mamma Mia Pizza Beer. And, believe it or not, there are actually real pieces of pizza stirred into the mix.

The home-brewed beer begins with Seeforth and his wife creating a tomato garlic puree and baking up the pizza. Then, they add oregano from their back yard for flavoring. Seefurth grinds his own wheat and add other spices to taste, but won’t reveal all the ingredients.

Even with adding a couple slices of pizza to the wort, Pizza Beer is reportedly a debris free drink as the margarita pizza used is put into the mash & steeped like a tea bag. The pizza spices are washed off and filtered into a brewpot, where it is boiled. During the process, hops & spices are added in a cheesecloth type bag. Once cooled, the liquid is trasnferred into a 6-gallon jug to ferment to two weeks. 

So, how’s it taste? While it probably won’t be available in Jersey anytime soon, the early reports out of Illinois are a mixed bag so far:

• BeerAdvocate’s readers have it rated at a C+ so far with comments ranging from “looks like watered down pizza sauce” to “drinkability is low, this beer tastes like an unbalanced pale ale with sprinkles of italian/pizza spices.”
• For The Love of Beer - “Overall, it’s an interesting beer to try and fairly tasty being as the spicing is not overpowering. However, I can’t say it leaves me wanting to run out and drink it again!”

There’s also a couple of good clips about the Seefurth’s and their brew that are worth checking out @ CBS-3 Philly and Fox News Channel.

While I’m sure this isn’t something I’ll be buying a keg of anytime in the near future, it’s definitely something I think you have to try at least once just for the experience. Hopefully, it’ll make it out of the Illinois area in the next couple of months so I can see if pizza and beer taste great together when they’re in the same glass.