WAUSAU - Ales, lagers, or stouts â€" every beer connoisseur has a favorite. But Tuesday, one ale garnered the most attention.
Beer drinkers from far and wide gathered at Red Eye Brewing in Wausau to try something totally new.
Tuesday evening Red Eye released a beer unlike any other.
"A lot of you are here for probably the craziest beer release we've ever done in the history of Red Eye," said Brewmaster and Co-owner Kevin Eichelberger.
The beer is brewed in the same way as most. It's an American Pale Ale and it's fairly hoppy.
"[We] added a little bit of grapefruit to punch up the citrus character of those hops and then added an edible glitter," said Eichelberger.
That's right, it's a beer that sparkles.
"You can kind of reactivate the swirl with a little straw," said Jennifer Gifford.
Gifford came to Wausau all the way from Corpus Christi, Texas to visit her sister. When she heard glitter beer was on the agenda, that was an added bonus.
"It's been super exciting and very well worth the wait," said Gifford.
After the beer is brewed, Eichelberger added an edible glitter, mostly used in cakes and frostings, to the keg.
The beer is called hop mess, based loosely on the term hot mess.
"[A hot mess is] a person or thing that is spectacularly disordered especially a source of peculiar fascination," said Eichelberger.
But any beer drinker knows, it's not necessarily about the look, it's about the taste. And that peculiar source of fascination didn't disappoint.
"The thing is you can do a trick like this and then the beer doesn't taste good but the beer is amazing," said Eichelberger.