As the Atlanta Braves finally prepare to begin playing in their new stadium, SunTrust Park, fans will be treated to a brand new beer named the “Chopsecutioner.” It is a light IPA brew aged, they say, over the wood chips from baseball bats.
That’s right, baseball bats have been included in the brewing process of the ball club’s new beer, according to MLB.com.
The new brew, created exclusively for the Braves by the Terrapin Beer Company, is being termed a “bat wood aged IPA.”
According to Terrapin brewmaster Brian “Spike” Buckowski, the Chopsecutioner is a light beer meant especially for those hot summer baseball days.
“When I’m sitting in the hot sun watching a baseball game, 7.3 percent alcohol beer is pretty tough, especially if you have a couple,” Buckowski told MLB.com’s Matt Snyder.
So, how do baseball bats figure into the brewing of the Chopsecutioner IPA?
“You can actually age something on wood chips or spirals or honeycombs,” Buckowski explained. “You can also age beer in bourbon barrels, wine barrels and extract beers like that.”
“We brew the Chopsecutioner and after the fermentation we transfer the beer onto the wood chips and then cool the beer down and age it,” the brewmaster concluded. “There’s some waste from bats from when they spin them down or carve them down and that’s the product that we use to age the beer. The wood chips from them making the bats and that’s what we use.”
The Chopsecutioner may not quite rank as one of the stranger foods one can get at a ballpark, but it might figure in as one of the more inventive. The new beer joins Atlanta’s other strange menu items such as its The Everything Dog — a hot dog with everything including popcorn on it — and the Braves’ Burgerizza.
Other strange ballpark menu items include the Blue Jays’ chicken and waffle on a stick, the Rangers’ Chicken nuggets and donuts on a skewer and their giant Wicked Pig sandwich. Then, there is the Chicago White Sox which offer its Chicago Dog Bloody Mary, which is a Bloody Mary drink with a hotdog skewer served in a mason jar.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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