TUPPER LAKE, N.Y. (WCAX) – A number of communities in the Adirondacks will experience full totality during Monday’s solar eclipse, and local brewers are toasting the celestial event with limited releases.
“Total Eclipse of the Park” is a black IPA brewed by the Lake Placid Pub — its first specialized brew for a natural event.
“Once we knew that the eclipse was going to be a great opportunity for people to be up here in the Adirondacks and view it, we were starting the process of looking into how to do something and what we could do. And of course we started with, we need to have a beer made,” said the pub’s Josh Spanburgh.
The beer has been on tap for the past two weeks and is being sold in 50 stores throughout the Adirondack region.
Brandon Wellington and Jessica Bowman were visiting from Philadelphia and got a chance to try the new brew. “Traditional hazy — so it has the hoppiness. It’s also black so you get the roasty toasty,” said Brandon.
“I’m getting a little bit of coffee in there,” Jessica added. “It’s delicious.”
Raquette River Brewing in Tupper Lake also created a Black IPA for the occasion. “The sky is going to go black for three minutes so we figured why not make a black IPA,” said the brewery’s Tanner Hockey.
Tupper Lake will have three minutes and 33 seconds of totality to be exact. Hockey says they used out-of-this-world ingredients to create their mild stout-classic West Coast IPA they’re calling “Totality in Tupper.” “We purposely picked hops with names from outer space, like one of them being galaxy. We bittered it with Apollo,” he said.
Raquette River will host a beer release party this Saturday to have the first tasting of the beer.
Other breweries in the region also created special eclipse-themed beers. Hex and Hop in Bloomingdale created “Dark Park.” Ausable Brewing Company in Keeseville has “Path of Totality IPA.” And Ledge Hill Brewing Company in Ticonderoga created “Black Ti IPA.”
Click here for all our eclipse coverage to help you get ready for the big day.