Ozarks Life: Brewing up a good time while monkeying around

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - At Dickerson Park Zoo you’ll never know what kind of monkey business will be going on.

“I thought it’d be interesting,” John Gilbey of Show-Me Brewing said.

“It’s just it’s gonna be a nice event,” Andy Pearsall of Wire Road Brewing said.

The peacocks were perturbed the focus was not on them. But the capybaras could care less.

On this day, the colobus monkeys are getting all of the attention.

“This is something that I’ve read about other zoos doing,” Joey Powell with the Dickerson Park Zoo said.

These monkeys are going to pick the ingredients for a new beer.

“We just wanted to come back and support the community and really appreciate this,” Gilbey said, “you know, the zoo here and what they do.”

Show-Me Brewing and Wire Road Brewing are combining their efforts on a beer that will be exclusive to Dickerson Park’s Brew at the Zoo event in September.

“It’s just a really neat night you can feed the giraffes, the petting zoo,” Powell said. “So you get to be a kid come out your little sampling cup and it’s you can taste beers from 12 or 13 different stations.”

The monkeys ripped into the wheat box first; that’s in a lot of beers these days.

The next, and most popular for the primates, is pineapple. The brew-masters may have dodged a bullet with the mystery ingredient being left alone. And these monkeys cleanse their pallet on a little coconut.

So it’ll be a pineapple and coconut, wheat beer.

“Kind of be tropical,” Gilbey said. “So it’ll be fun.”

“You know, pineapple and coconut it’s pretty typical in some styles of beer,” Pearsall said. “In some sours and stuff. So it’ll be alright.”

Unfortunately, these prognosticating primates won’t be able to sample their masterpiece.

“They will never ever get to try it,” Powell said. “Human consumption only.”

The Brew at the Zoo is on Saturday, September, 16th from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. with a VIP session from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. It’s for ages 21 and over. Click here for more information on the Brew at the Zoo.

To learn more about Show-Me Brewing click here and for Wire Road Brewing click here.

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