By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
With fall comes thoughts turn to all things pumpkin spice. Add to the mix Juniper’s Monster Mash, pumpkin spice latte beer.
The new brew is more than a new name of the restaurant’s chalk board, it marks a collaboration between newcomer Juniper Brewing Company, which opened Feb 1, with Grounds for Thought, a 32-year-old establishment across South Main Street.
Zach Tracy, who founded Juniper with his wife, Chris, said he wanted to do a coffee beer. He’s made them before at other places he’s worked, but this would be a first for Juniper.
So he reached out to Kelly Wicks. “Kelly has forgotten more about coffee than I’ll ever know,” Tracy said. “Working with him was special for me. I learned a lot.”
“It’s a good opportunity to cooperate,” Wicks said.
Tracy explained that the beer would be an English porter. “We knew how we wanted to add the coffee to get that flavor, but we wanted the rich coffee aromatics.”
So coffee is added at two stages. First Tracy creates a cold brew concentrate to add to the mix, and later in the process, he adds whole beans with the hops.
“I let him decide which of the beans would work best,” Tracy said.
Wicks decided to use two of the shop’s direct trade coffees.
These are beans purchased directly from the growers. So the cold brew concentrate will be made from Finca KOA from Nicaragua, and the whole beans will be from Finca El Carmelo in Colombia.
This is not the first time Grounds had provided beans for a coffee beer. About 15 years ago Wicks worked with Roger Shope then at Maumee Bay Brewing on such a brew.
He said they’re always open to working with other manufacturers.
“It’s a fun time in the craft beer industry,” he said. “There’s so much originality and creativity going on, and we’re proud to be part of it.”
He shared the news with Cleymer Ortez, owner Finca KOA. “He is pleased that his coffee is being used to create a craft product up and down the line.”
In addition to the coffee, the beer uses 42 pounds of aseptic pumpkin puree.
Some brewers just use pumpkin spice but Tracy insists on mixing in the fruit itself. The Monster Mash joins two other pumpkin beers on Juniper’s menu.
The Thriller, the brewery’s “flagship pumpkin beer,” uses 85 pounds in a batch. Then there’s the Wolfman’s Brother which is “ double of everything, double the pumpkin spice, double the alcohol” and lot more squash, though in this case it’s brewed with 130 pounds of butternut squash which has more flavor, Tracy said.
The puree is put into the mash with the grain at the initial stages to extract the maximum flavor and sugars.
“People go crazy for pumpkin beers this time of year,” he said. “It’s the start of fall.”
But he didn’t want to rush the season either. Pumpkin beers have been on supermarket shelves for weeks. Instead he introduced the Oktoberfest beer, and then on Oct. 1 started serving the pumpkin beers.
With winter being prime time for coffee beers, he looks forward to other collaborations with Wicks or other coffee shops.
“We’re just trying to promote Bowling Green,” Tracy said. “We know the community is supportive of all the other businesses.”
Juniper will pursue anything that brings more people downtown, and if they like the Monster Mash and decide to go across the street to buy some of the coffee that went in it, “that’s a home run for both of us.”
Juniper opened up its coffee side on Feb 1, an opening delayed by the onset of the pandemic. It started pouring beer on April 1.
The kitchen has been open since the beginning, but its offerings have grown over time. Tracy said the dinner menu started with boards of food to be shared by diners. While some, such as the taco board, were a hit, others didn’t have much demand. The shareable board, he said, means everyone at the table has to agree on what they want to eat.
So now Juniper is offering more individual dishes.
But the kitchen is not all the way to where he and Chris, and chef Joel Perez want it to be.
They’ve also started presenting music on Friday and Saturday nights, picking up from their participation as the Friday inclement weather venue for the weekend summer music series.
On Friday, from 6:30-8:30, it’s Timmy C and the Game Changers, and on Saturday from 7:30-9:30 p.m. it’s an assortment of bands booked by “Timmy C” Concannon.
Tracy sees the music as fitting the establishment in with what else is going on downtown. If they want, patrons can have a meal, and then head out to hear music at one of the other nightspots in BG. Or go home having partaken of good music and a good meal.
