Name: Dessert Station: Apple Pie
Brand: Corporate Ladder Brewing Company
Availability: InStock

Look closely at the can and the pie on the label has a zipper running down the middle of its lattice crust, pull tab and all. It is a fair summary of the pitch. "Turns out you don't need a crust to get to the good part," Corporate Ladder Brewing Company wrote in announcing the return of Dessert Station: Apple Pie.

The beer is a gluten free dessert beer at 6.5 percent ABV, conditioned on apple, brown sugar and cinnamon. The brewery describes sweet baked apple arriving first, followed by cinnamon and caramelized brown sugar. It calls the finish rich rather than clean.

Dessert Station is the Palmetto brewery's standing line of gluten free beers built to taste like something off a dessert menu, a run that has previously included a Butter Beer entry. Corporate Ladder describes its own range as gluten-free beers inspired by decadent desserts. This one keeps the ingredient list short enough to read at a glance: fruit, spice, sugar. No pastry involved. In a gluten free beer, that is less a stylistic decision than a structural one.

Apple Pie is pouring on draft now and is available in 16 ounce four-packs to go, with online ordering for taproom pickup.

Editor’s Take

There is a zipper on the pie. I want to be clear that I am not speaking metaphorically: the lattice crust on this can has an actual zipper running down the middle of it, pull tab sitting halfway along, as though the pie had been asked to change for dinner. And the line the brewery ran alongside it - that you do not need a crust to get to the good part - is that rare bit of copy that also happens to be a specification. This is a gluten free beer. The crust was never on the table.

Which is a better joke than it first looks. Apple pie without pastry is hot spiced fruit, and hot spiced fruit is what an enormous amount of autumn drinking is built on anyway: the mulled things, the spiced things, most of the cider aisle. Corporate Ladder has quietly conceded that the crust was carrying structural load and nothing else, handed the rest of the job to the yeast, and then drawn a zipper on it. I would like to see zippers on more labels.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Dessert Station: Apple Pie Puts a Zipper on the Lattice Crust

The pie on the label has a zipper running down its lattice crust, pull tab and all. Corporate Ladder's returning gluten free dessert beer skips the pastry and goes straight to apple, cinnamon and brown sugar.

Source & Editorial