If you’re going to make a pineapple upside-down cake, you’re going to need a kitchen. And if you’re going to make a great pineapple upside-down cake milkshake IPA, well, you’re also going to need a kitchen.
Or so we’ve concluded from the fruit-forward and delightfully cakey IPA from Liberty’s 3Halves Brewing. The new brewery, which shares space with Jousting Pigs BBQ just off the city’s historic square, is run by emerging star brewer Rodney Beagle, previously of Colony in North Kansas City. After Colony’s owners shuttered the brewing operation to focus on concerts, Beagle did six months as a gypsy brewer, making beer at seven different spots around town. Once he got the keys to the former Rock & Run Brewery space, he made himself at home by simplifying the system and acquainting himself with the kitchen.
To make this pineapple upside down cake milkshake IPA, he spent six and a half hours blending pineapple juice and maraschino cherries into the lactose-sweetened base beer with the help of the kitchen’s commercial grade robot coupe food processor. Beagle then strained off all the well-ground solids from the beer and reintroduced them right before kegging.
“My number one focus is beer first, flavor second,” he says. “But when you have a beer that is called something like ‘pineapple upside-down cake milkshake IPA,’ in people’s first drink, they’re going to expect it to taste exactly like that,” he says. “And if not, they’re going to knock it.”
Well, no knocks here: This beer opens with a big slice of lightly tropical dessert before settling into a reassuring beeriness.
