Glitter beer is a gimmick, and Matt Pennisi doesn’t normally do gimmicks.
His Durty Bull Brewing Company, whose brewery opened a year and a half in downtown Durham, is known for its IPAs and funky, inventive sours. Make a beer sparkle with edible glitter is the sort of thing brewers do to get attention; he and his colleagues had only joked about it—wouldn’t it be funny if … They never actually considered doing it, not for real. It’s not that kind of brewery.
But then he heard that porn star Stormy Daniels was giving an interview to 60 Minutes on Sunday night to discuss her alleged affair with President Trump, which Trump attorney Michael Cohen tried to keep quiet via a $130,000 hush payment—ostensibly without Trump’s knowledge, but come on—a few weeks before the election. Last week, Cohen and Trump sued Daniels for more than $20 million for violating a nondisclosure agreement, and Daniels’s lawyer accused them of “thuggish behavior.” Then, on Thursday, Daniels’s lawyer tweeted this:
Which is all to say, this could be one hell of an entertaining interview. And Pennisi and company decided to make a joke of it. They decided to show the interview in their taproom—and to make some glitter beer for the occasion. It seemed appropriate.
“It was a perfect way to make a joke without having to be vulgar and actively make a joke,” he says.
The so-called NDA IPA, which the Durty Bull’s taproom will be pouring Sunday, isn’t actually a new beer. Rather, they took a keg of Durty Bull’s Genetic Drift, a juicy and delicious hazy IPA, and added edible—but flavorless—glitter from Michael’s, the kind of thing used to make cakes and icing.
So if you want to watch a porn star (probably) talk about the president’s junk on national television, and do it with a glitter beer in hand among friends who will point and laugh along with you, head down to Durty Bull (206 Broadway Street) at seven p.m. Sunday.
