A “Map of The World” According to the Disney Imagineers
As I had noted in my Innis & Gunn post, for Jersey Week, we hit Disney. During the trip we made our way to Epcot. For you novices out there, Epcot has two sections: Future World and World Showcase. World Showcase is broken down into a series of countries situated around the World Showcase Lagoon, and while you stroll around the “world”, you can keep your kids occupied by grabbing them a paint stirrer which they will carry to collect stamps from each country that they visit. While the kids are occupied with this scavenger hunt of sorts, we parents get to venture from kiosk to kiosk trying the international fare, and if we’re very lucky, an adult beverage or two.
photo courtesy of eatingwdw.com
On the first leg of the “World” tour, I picked up the Innis & Gunn Original in Scotland and drank it in Canada. After a quick trip down the coast, I found myself at the Florida local kiosk. (And, we made great time. Canada to Florida in about four minutes and no tolls. Almost as good as traveling by map!). There was a kiosk for Florida’s local providers and there was an assortment of locally sourced food and beverages. After a quick perusal of the menu, I picked up a couple of sliders, a white sangria (the Hurricane Class 5) from Florida Orange Groves Winery for my better half and a Sunshade Organic Pale Ale from Orlando Brewing Partners. Orlando Brewing began in 2000, was rescued from bankruptcy in 2004 and survived an eminent domain claim on the site of their brewery. Today, they make a number of beers that are only available at the brewery or in kegs as well as six beers that come in 120z bottles (for us travelers looking for something suitable for transport home). They produce four organic ales (the Blonde Ale, the Red Ale, the Pale Ale and the O-Town Brown Ale) as well as the Olde Pelican EPA and the Blackwater Dry Porter.
For EPCOT, Orlando Brewing tweaked the recipe for their Organic Pale Ale and produced the Sunshade. Here is what Bill Droste, brewery partner at Orlando Brewing told the Orlando Business Journal about their Sunshade Organic Pale Ale:
“We took one of our mainstay beers, which already is a great product, and just gave it a little TLC. We wanted to make sure that we put on a good show for Disney. We tweaked it a bit to make sure it was absolutely perfect, making sure it didn’t cook too long and it matured properly”.
And now for my impressions of this beer…
- Appearance: Orange marmalade with little foam.
- Aroma: Sweet malt with hints of grapefruit and pine.
- Taste: Flat, with little to no carbonation. Thick and creamy with slightly muted flavors; more like a test pale ale with minimal sweetness and very little hops.
- ABV: ?% (the Organic Pale Ale is at 6.3%)
This was a refreshing beer and a great paring with the sliders. I would like to try the regular Organic Pale Ale and see just how the beer was “tweaked” for EPCOT.
Categories: Brew Review, Orlando Brewing
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It's just the booze dancing... 
The “EPCOT Tweak” is really a wider “Disney World Tweak” which simply adds the same proprietary food additive which makes its way into everything sold for consumption within the boundaries at all of the Disney properties: “Spill-Free Vaporizing Ions.” The miraculous compound is tasteless and activated upon a sudden gravitational disruption. Essentially, if the beer accelerates towards the ground the Spill-Free ions activate and vaporize the beer before it hits the ground. That’s why you can spend a week at Disney and never see spilled food or drinks on the ground. I understand that there were exceptional precautions established at the lab during development after one of the scientists who had some of the compound on his hands, slipped and fell. His hands were vaporized before he even hit the ground but his arms remained intact – spewing blood all over the laboratory. Fortunately he survived but the project was set a serious setback.
That incident sparked fears of people’s digestive tracts vaporizing in the park during or after consuming a food or drink should they trip or even ride an attraction with a steep descent. That’s not the sort of thing one expects at the happiest place on Earth – perhaps a few mounds of melting ice cream on the bricks wouldn’t be such a bad thing. In any event, they worked out the kinks and here we are.
So in the end, the only difference between the EPCOT version of that brew and the standard one id=s that the standard one will spill. Oh, and the Cigar City Florida Cracker on that chalk board is a really nice and crisp beer. No surprise there.
Cheers!
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