Cherry Moon – Collaboration Brew with Crimespree Magazine

A post written by Jon Jordan. Co-Founder of Crimespree Magazine.

I’m a Milwaukee native born and bred. It’s pretty hard to spend much time in Milwaukee without getting a sense of its history with beer. Hell, the city grew primarily because of beer and the industries that popped up to support the beer brewers here. My own family has close connections. My grandfather’s machine shop did work for all the major breweries over the years. On my Mother’s side she had an uncle who actually ran beer in Milwaukee for Capone. In Milwaukee beer is part of the culture. We put the stadium where it is so people can tailgate and drink beer. Hell, the team’s name is Brewers. We have Friday night fish frys that involve a healthy amount of this awesome liquid. Beer is in our blood and DNA.

For myself and my wife another large part of our personal history involves mystery novels and crime related movies and TV. We met at a mystery convention. We now run a magazine that celebrates the mystery genre because we want to share our love of these stories. Crimespree Magazine has been spreading the love of tales of mystery and noir for over 12 years now.

Our love of mystery grew to include a local yearly get together for fans of mysteries. Every November we have a one day event called *Murder and Mayhem in Milwaukee. Authors come in from all over the country (and sometimes out of the country) for a day of interviews and panels with more than 25 authors. It seemed like a natural extension of what we want to do with our magazine, share the love of this genre. Together with friends Penny Halle and Erica Neubauer this has become an annual event that authors and fans look forward to.

This past summer I was witness to MobCraft rehabbing their new brewing facility. It was an amazing thing to behold as they transformed and old empty warehouse space into a state of the art facility of modern brewing run with an old school love of the art of brewing.

After meeting the madman in charge, Henry Schwartz, we got to be friends and in one conversation he mentioned he thought doing a beer for Crimespree Magazine and launching in time for our Murder and Mayhem event would be a cool idea. And there was no way I could do anything but agree.

So the fun part was now what kind of beer and what to call it? After some discussions with my wife Ruth and a New York bartender / Mystery Author friend Todd Robinson we decided on a stout beer. MobCraft does great stouts. But what about flavors? Well, since it’s coming out right before the holidays we thought cherry and chocolate because…..

This also brings to me another memory of Milwaukee growing up. Every Christmas my family, including various aunts and uncles and grandparents, always has Cherry cordials. We always got them from Quality candy. I always knew it was the holidays because this great candy was in the house. My wife and I still do this every December. So just like our love of mystery novels it’s something we share with all our friends. It made perfect sense.

Amazing beer to share with a flavor and name that bring in the things we love to share with friends and we hope you’ll want to as well.

CHERRY MOON – CHERRY CHOCOLATE STOUT

So I hope you’ll give this brew a try and I hope it makes you as happy as all the memories it evokes make us.

Jon Jordan

*This year Murder and Mayhem in on November 5th and details are on the website www.murdermayhemmilwaukee

Part of this year’s event includes Noir at the Bar which will have 6 authors reading and otherwise entertaining fans. Noir at the Bar will be on November 3rd at MobCraft and include the launch of Crimespree Magazine’s CHERRY MOON – An Imperial Chocolate Stout with Cherries.

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