Miss the First Round of Biden Beer? A Second Batch Is Coming Soon.

The first batch sold out in three days, a “sign of how much progressives needed to celebrate.” Pre-sales for the second batch begin sometime this week.

If you missed out on the first round of Biden Beer, you’ll be happy to know that Minocqua Brewing Co. owner, Kirk Bangstad, said a second, bigger batch is brewing and will hopefully be ready before the holidays.

The idea for Biden Beer started with Bangstad and his brewmaster brainstorming over beers before the election. Polls at that point predicted former Vice President Joe Biden would win by a landslide (“which unfortunately wasn’t true,” Bangstad added). They felt a beer in Biden’s honor was in order.

“We started shooting ideas back and forth about how we would describe it if it,” he said. “That’s when we started having fun.”

They came up with many of the lines they used in the company’s Facebook post advertising the beer that night:

It’s inoffensive, especially to women.

It’s not bitter.

It’s best served while taking the temperature down.

Guaranteed not to overstay its welcome in your fridge.

How do you spell RELIEF?  Biden Beer.

Bangstad, who himself was running for Wisconsin’s 34th Assembly District, had ruffled some feathers with a fiery op-ed about the Legislature’s failure to act on COVID-19 and by hanging a giant Biden-Harris sign outside the brewpub in Republican-leaning Oneida County. So why not tack on one more thing to annoy his conservative neighbors?

“It was a spoof,” said Bangstad, who lost his bid for office. “We’d already put our stake in the ground that we wanted to help progressives win. We were for Joe Biden.”

They decided to go with a Kolsch, a type of light beer, lower in alcohol, especially good cold, and with fewer hops to keep the bitterness low. They posted it on the website and thought a few people would have a laugh, and they’d sell a few beers.

They sold out in three days. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote a story, which was then picked up by The Hill. A German content website sent a video team to the brewery and posted the video on YouTube. Meanwhile at the brewery, a line snaked around the parking lot with people from as far as Milwaukee and Madison lined up to buy a six-pack. 

Bangstad interpreted it as a sign of how much progressives needed to celebrate. 

“We’ve been put through the wringer the last four years,” Bangstad said. “Anyone who’s listened to the mainstream media and believes in science has been through the wringer the last four years. Drinking a beer is the perfect way to celebrate the end of a nightmare.”

And for his business, it’s been a relief. Bangstad closed his brewpub due to COVID-19 and has only received a fraction of the revenue by selling their beer to-go. 

“Just like everybody we’re hurting from COVID,” he said. “This little bit of revenue is helping us out this winter, for sure.”

Last week “Brewmaster Rich” posted that the second round has been brewed and is fermenting but still needs a few more weeks before it can be canned. This time around, they plan to have people place orders online in advance so instead of long lines, they can just handle it like a drive-thru: people pull up, show the ticket with their order, and then drive away with their beer.