Last October, the Simons Foundation approached breweries throughout the United States, including two here in Kentucky, and asked them to make special eclipse beers for the 2024 solar eclipse.
Dry Ground Brewing and Henderson Brewing Company partnered to make two special beers to help celebrate this asteroid enamel phenomenon.
Whether you're able to, Paducah was lucky enough to be in the path of totality for the 2017 eclipse that came through.
And at that time we brewed a special beer for the event.
At that time it was called Umbra and it was a coffee milled staple.
So a darker beer to kind of tie in with the eclipse.
This time when it came around, we were approached by the Simons Foundation in New York City to travel up there, and they had chosen breweries in each state that was on the path of totality in Kentucky, since we had smaller breweries through western Kentucky.
They chose to dry ground and Henderson Brewing Company in Henderson.
So Doug Laramie and I from Henderson went to New York City and met with the Simons Foundation, along with about a dozen or so of the other breweries along the path who were going to be involved.
Doug and I kind of decided, Well, we've already got this beer we brewed before for the 2017 eclipse.
Why don't we do that as a collab?
You come down to our space and we'll brew that and we'll go to Henderson and brew a blind version of that.
I love that.
So the beer we brewed the 2:00 pm is a coffee milk stout.
It's brewed with lactose sugar, so lactose friendly and a local coffee roaster we use there beans.
It's a dark beer, not super high in alcohol, around five and a half percent.
So not super heavy like you would expect.
A lot of dark beers to be very sweet.
Nice roasty coffee.
Finish the lights out of that being the 2:02 p.m. beer we brewed in Henderson is a blind stout which is brewed similarly as a normal stout where you would think dark beer but with lighter grains.
They also use local coffee beans and they use cocoa nibs to give it a little bit of chocolaty finish as well.
The idea around the collaboration being we breathed the dark beer.
They brewed a light version of that beer to go along with the eclipse, the sun and the moon.
We'd love to bring it back.
I don't know when the next eclipse is coming.
It may be 150 years where we get to brew it again, but we'd love to brew it again up here.
Each brewery chosen from states along the path of totality name their special eclipse beers based on the time of complete totality in their city.
Pretty cool.