Funk Made This Brew Lactose-Free & Vegan Friendly, but Ice Cream-Inspired

​Making a collaboration with a creamery can be a fun way to market your brand, but not everyone can get in on the fun if you use lactose or animal products to impart a flavor​. So Funk Brewing found a way to make an Ice Cream-inspired Stout called Cookie Monster.

Cookie Monster was conceived over an ice cream tasting hosted by the owners of Batch Micro Creamery in Allentown, Pennsylvania explained Head Brewer Scott Adams.

“They were huge fans of our beer and proposed working on a collaboration together,” he explained to Brewer. “After eating way too much ice cream we all agreed we would use their Cookie Monster ice cream as an inspiration.

“It’s cookies n’ cream with cookie dough added.”

Funk avoids using lactose in their beers so Adams said the thought of making an ice cream-inspired beer without it was an awesome challenge.

“I’ve gone on to use the techniques I developed for this beer in a few others since,” he said.

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They sent some of this Pale Stout to the Foxwoods Beerfest “Battle of the Brews” held at Foxwoods Resort Casino of Connecticut and promptly won Best Beer.

The beer has been released a few times now and demand has gone up so much that it now is more than a taproom exclusive.

“The beer was a huge hit but didn’t really take off until it won … at Foxwoods,” Adams said. “We hadn’t really planned on making it more than once but the demand is huge in the New England area. We usually aim to have a fair amount left over after fulfilling our orders for out-of-state [retail] but the last two times we’ve basically been sold out within a day or so.”

With distro expanding and the beer finding its way to retail away from the brewery, on-premise to-go sales have needed rules to make sure people get some chance at the beer.

They set preorders and had consumers set pick-up times at the brewery to alleviate lines. They also limited sales to two four-packs.

“I feel if we had made this available online we wouldn’t have any available when we opened the doors​,” Adams explained. “We can definitely brew more per release but we would rather just brew it more times per year to keep the product and the demand fresh.

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