KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
Kodiak Island Brewery will debut its newest creation this weekend in Anchorage at the Beer and Barley Wine Festival. Midnight Sunshine is a collaboration between the brewery’s Ben Millstein and Ben Johnson from the Midnight Sun Brewery in Anchorage. Millstein says the beer is inspired by a local favorite.
— (Beer 1 :25 "We thought of the name Midnight Sunshine, because the original beer is called imperial sunshine and they’re called Midnight Sun so that seemed like an obvious title. Once we came up with that it was just a simple realization that with a name like midnight sunshine it might be nice if it was a dark beer, so we added some de-bittered black malt to follow the black IPA trend. We affectionately call this beer an imperial black India coastal lager aged in French chardonnay oak barrels on brett.")
That’s a description only a beer geek could truly appreciate. Millstein says he and Johnson started out with no expectations, except for that their final product had to be special.
— (Beer 2 :24 "When you’re doing a collaboration you don’t really want to say ‘We brought these brewers together from different places to create an … amber.’ There’s just not a whole lot of story. You have to have something to make it into an interesting story."
Millstein says collaboration among brewers is increasingly popular in recent years; however this is his first time working with a fellow Alaskan.
— (Beer 3 :25 "I collaboration on a beer in Copenhagen a few years back, but this is the first time I’ve done a collaboration in-state. It was part of the idea behind the beer. We were at the festival last year and realized that we’d done collaboration out-of-state, but had never done them in-state and we thought, ‘What’s up with that? Let’s get together and do something’")
The Beer and Barley Wine Festival runs this Friday through Saturday in Anchorage. Millstein says he’s not sure when Midnight Sunshine will be available in Kodiak, but says it will definitely make it’s way to the island somehow.
