South Jersey Brewery Introduces Pork Roll Beer
by Paul Kurtz
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Flying Fish Brewery in South Jersey is paying tribute to the Garden State's favorite breakfast meat: pork roll.
Before you gag, consider this from those who've sampled Exit 7: Pork Roll Porter.
"It's a good enough porter, but I'm not getting pork roll. Light on the pork roll, has a hint," said one sampler.
And that's exactly what Flying Fish founder Gene Muller was going for.
"We really wanted to make a beer that's drinkable. We didn't just want to have just something and said 'oh wow, that's pork roll.' This is something that has that character to it, but it is something that you can enjoy a pint or two of," said Muller.
The brewing team dumped at least 30 pounds of pork roll into the boil, but made sure the finished product was virtually fat-free.
"What we did was bake it in an oven at 200 degrees and kinda render most of that out and put the pork roll and mesh bags into the kettle and brewed it," Muller explained.
Pork Roll porter is a new edition to Flying Fish's Exit series. It's named Exit 7 for the one that leads to Taylor provisions, the famous pork roll company.
Exit 7 is getting an initial thumbs up from beer lovers, including this guy, who can't wait to pair it with breakfast.
Muller says the beer was designed with grilled meats in mind.
"Next to a pork roll egg and cheese, it would probably pick up on the flavors even better than just by itself," he said.
Exit 7 has just started shipping, and retailers should be getting it this week. Muller says there's been a lot of interest.
