BEAUMONT, Texas — A Southeast Texas brewery is getting into the spirit of Mardi Gras with some festive beers.
Starting Wednesday, "Struggle Street Brewery" in Beaumont will be serving a king cake and a hurricane inspired beer on tap and in cans.
Owner Scott Reeves says this is their first Mardi Gras since they opened. The brew pub on Calder Ave is actually bringing out four new brews for the occasion. In addition to the king cake and hurricane inspired stouts they will introduce a Green Watermelon Gose, and a Purple Grape Sour Seltzer.
"We have our king cake style, we have a hurricane struggle tart as a lot of people go to bourbon street they drink hurricane drinks so it's inspired just like that, it's passion fruit orange cherry, we have a watermelon gose that actually kind of pours out green and then we have a purple drink, it's a grape sour seltzer, so we get the colors of Mardi Gras into our brews," Reeves said.
Everything is brewed on site at the Beaumont brewery and each takes about six to eight hours followed by two weeks of fermentation before the beer is served.
"We have to mill the grain up here on site, the water comes up to a certain temperature and we add the grains, that brings the sugars out so that the yeast that we add later on in the process can convert that sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol," Reeves said.
The king cake struggle stout is inspired by Raos' king cake according to Reeves. They use actual king cake from Raos, as well as their cream cheese icing to brew the stout.
"We actually added those to the fermenter to allow the cinnamon and some of the dough flavors to come out along with a couple of gallons of their cream cheese icing which really kind of thickens and sweetens up the beer and gives it a nice flavor, it tastes like king cake," Reeves said.
Reeves says it's sure to get you in the Mardi Gras spirit. The bartenders allow free samples of all of their brews, to make sure customers can find what they like.
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“We're not necessarily the place to come to and just grab your basic beer,” Reeves told 12News. “We do offer those but there's so many other options that so many people might be very surprised when they sit down and actually try and allow our bartenders to give them samples and small tastes of everything”
“All that's always on the house you can try anything before you buy it,” Reeves said.
