Photograph courtesy of Monday Night Brewing
With the FIFA World Cup expected to bring thousands of soccer fans to the city this summer, Monday Night Brewing co-founder and CEO Joel Iverson knew he had to do something interesting to make his brewery stand out. Last year, he went to a World Cup information session for small businesses hosted by the city, and the gist, he says, was, “If you’re not right near the stadium, you’ve got to come up with something really good to draw people [in].”
Knowing that there’s a large overlap between soccer and craft beer fans, Iverson and his team decided to wait and see which international teams would be playing in Atlanta, then try to collaborate with a brewery from one of those countries to create a unique, World Cup-themed brew. Iverson says the goal was to make Monday Night “a welcoming hub” for fans from other countries.
“There is a craft brewery in almost every country, and they share the same values of community we as a craft brewery do,” Iverson says.
Of the 10 countries coming to Atlanta for group stage matches, Iverson and his team picked two with strong beer cultures to try to collaborate with: Spain and Czechia. But with just a couple of months left before World Cup games began, the team had to quickly find international breweries who were willing to partner up.
Photograph courtesy of Monday Night Brewing
Luckily, Monday Night brewmaster Peter Kiley already had ties to Czechia. In 2022, he went on a cultural trade mission with other North American brewers to learn the art of Czech beer and while there, met the team at Dva Kohouti brewery in Prague. At the Craft Brewers Conference this past April, just weeks after Czechia qualified for its Atlanta World Cup match, Kiley pitched Monday Night’s collaboration plan to Dva Kohouti’s brewmaster, Lukáš Tomsa, who loved it. In May, Kiley and his family boarded a plane to Prague and spent a week in the city. Tomsa and Kiley wanted to create a Czech beer that respected the country’s brewing traditions while also evolving them. The result is Světlý Ležák Czechia, a pale lager made with Czech malts and Czech Žatec and Kazbek hops. But to give the beer “a small little nudge towards the future,” Kiley dry hopped the brew, something he says would never be done traditionally.
“No one dry hops lagers in [Czechia], not at all.” Kiley says. “And even using Kazbek, which I think was developed around 2008, a lot of [Czech brewers] just stick with the noble varietals, the ones that have always been around.”
Photograph courtesy of Monday Night Brewing
Kiley describes the Czech beer as “flavorful, yet nuanced,” and says that while beer nerds will appreciate “the complexity of the flavors and how it’s made,” your average customer will still find it “extremely delicious, very palatable, and [won’t] throw your palate through the ringer.”
The Spanish-inspired beer is the complete opposite of the Czech beer in both product and how the collaboration came together. Kiley knew he wanted to partner with Barcelona’s Garage Beer Co., but never received a response from the brewery. So on his flight from Prague to Barcelona, he sent one last hail Mary email to the brewery’s marketing director, letting them know he was planning to visit the brewery even if the collaboration never materialized. He finally got a response.
“I ended up coming by and nothing was solidified,” he says, “but we [Kiley and Garage’s marketing and production teams] ended up having probably about six beers [in] three-and-a-half hours, just sitting outside at the end of a work week. I went into it just with the expectation of hopefully getting to make some new friends and we just had the best time.”
Photograph courtesy of Monday Night Brewing
Garage’s team asked Kiley what kind of beer he would make if he could do anything. The idea of a paella-inspired beer was born. Kiley and the Garage team then spent about a half hour designing the recipe, and Garage head brewer Dan Ashley helped Kiley source the Spanish ingredients.
On paper, Kiley says 2XÑEIPA, the paella-inspired New England double IPA, is “absolutely crazy.” Its ingredients include rice, Spanish saffron, smoked paprika, Valencia orange juice, and anchovy hops, which, Kiley assures, is just a fun name and tastes nothing like fish. (“It smells like candied watermelon, which is perfect for a hazy New England-style IPA,” he says.)
Kiley says the saffron gives the beer an “unbelievable” electric yellow color, and while the beer’s flavor is hard to describe, he notes that drinkers will smell the orange juice first and taste the saffron and paprika.
“I don’t want a beer to taste like paella,” he clarifies, “I wanted to be able to share some of those building blocks that are true to Spanish cuisine and see how we could implement them into a product that is used to celebrate two countries coming together to work on something, all for a football match, which is awesome.”
Both 2XÑEIPA and Světlý Ležák will be available on draft and packaged at both of Monday Night’s Atlanta taprooms (the Grove on the Westside and the Garage in West End) starting June 15. Select bars, including the LikeMinds pop-up on the Beltline Eastside Trail, and package stores will also carry the beers. The Grove taproom will host watch parties for the June 15 Spain game and the June 18 Czechia game with themed food (Iverson says there may be paella at the Spain party), and as part of a larger “Summer of Soccer” celebration, the brewery is also planning activities like a soccer video game tournament, a 3v3 soccer tournament, international drinking games, and more to keep the World Cup party going.
“Atlanta is an extremely hospitable city,” Kiley says, “and we want to make sure that when people visit us that we always have something to celebrate and always have something to show them.”
