Name: Lunch Break: Grape
Brand: Corporate Ladder Brewing Company
Availability: InStock

Corporate Ladder Brewing Company's Lunch Break series works through the contents of a lunch box one beer at a time. There has been a peanut butter and strawberry jelly entry, and a peanut butter, banana and honey sandwich. The newest one goes back to the default.

Lunch Break: Grape is a gluten free sour at 6.5 percent, conditioned on concord grape and peanut butter. The can states the premise without ornament, calling it a PB and J inspired gluten free sour, and stacks half a dozen sandwiches up the front of the label with two small figures picnicking on the top one.

Concord is a more deliberate choice than it looks. Nearly all American grape jelly is made from it, and concord is a labrusca grape rather than a wine grape, which is why its flavor is the musky, faintly candied thing most people actually mean when they say something tastes like grape. The compound largely responsible for that character is also the basis of artificial grape flavoring. Wine grapes taste nothing like any of it. Reaching for concord specifically is the difference between a beer that tastes like jelly and a beer that tastes like fruit.

The peanut butter is the harder ingredient. Fat and acid are not obvious partners, and lipids are also the standard enemy of head retention in beer. Corporate Ladder has been running that combination through the Lunch Break line for a while now, which is a reasonable amount of practice at a problem most breweries never take on.

Lunch Break: Grape is out in 16 ounce four-packs with online ordering for pickup, and it is pouring at the Palmetto taproom alongside the strawberry version.

Editor’s Take

Concord is the correct grape and I will not be argued out of it. It is the grape of the jelly jar and the juice box, and the compound that gives it its character is the same one artificial grape flavoring was built around. Which means concord is very nearly the only fruit on earth that tastes like an imitation of itself. Putting the real thing into a beer designed to evoke a sandwich is therefore a pleasingly circular act, and I have been enjoying it all morning.

The peanut butter is the brave half. Fat and sourness are not natural allies, and peanut butter is famously unkind to a beer's foam, so building a sour around it is a bit like specifying that the sports car should also carry a wardrobe. Corporate Ladder has shipped a strawberry version and a peanut butter, banana and honey version already, so somebody in Palmetto has worked out where the line sits. There is a whole category of beer trying to taste like dessert. Almost nothing is trying to taste like the middle of a Tuesday.

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.

Lunch Break: Grape Puts Peanut Butter Into a Gluten Free Sour

The Lunch Break series goes back to the default sandwich. Corporate Ladder's returning gluten free sour is conditioned on concord grape and peanut butter, and both halves of that are doing more work than they look like.

Source & Editorial