Invisible Man Brewing secures enough Girl Scout cookies to host brew pairing event
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Cookies and milk are a classic combination. Kids love them. Santa loves them.
Cookies and beer? Not quite as common.
Despite supply-chain issues that have affected the delivery of Girl Scout cookies in some parts of the country, the annual treats will be paired with several local beers, courtesy of Invisible Man Brewing in Greensburg. The brewery will host a special pairing event from 4-10 p.m. Friday.
Owner Sean McLaughlin said it is one of a number of events “aimed at getting our patrons reengaged in coming back to the downtown Greensburg area.”
Having opened only a few months before the covid-19 pandemic, McLaughlin said a good number of early customers haven’t returned.
“I wanted to give people some different things to do so we can attract new customers and give our loyal customers something new,” he said.
The event will pair Invisible Man’s Berliner Weisse with citrus-tinged “Lemon-Up” cookies, its Irish Red Ale with the new Adventureful brownie-and-caramel cookies, and its Peach Raspberry Sour Ale with Trefoil shortbread cookies.
“Out of our pairings, I think the Plum Porter with Do-Si-Do peanut-butter sandwich cookies will be the best,” McLaughlin said. “A lot of the flavors blend together well. The porter has notes of roasted coffee and chocolate with a dark fruit finish that will pair well with the peanut butter — almost like a PB&J with chocolate.”
Tickets are $20 and are available at Eventbrite.com by entering “cookie and beer pairing” into the search box.
Invisible Man Brewing is at 132 S. Pennsylvania Ave.
McLaughlin is in good company with the notion of pairing Girl Scout cookies and adult beverages: Ripepi Winery in Monongahela will host a wine-and-cookie pairing at 5 p.m. Saturday, and Black Dog Wine Co. in Oakdale is hosting a wine-and-cookie event at 1 p.m. Sunday. Tickets for those events also are available at Eventbrite.com.
The Greensburg event nearly didn’t happen on time — McLaughlin said Invisible Man staff members were working to make sure they’d have enough cookies.
Delivery issues for some types of the cookies are linked to production delays experienced by Kentucky-based Little Brownie Bakers, which supplies cookies for about two-thirds of the nation’s 111 Girl Scout councils.
That included some troops in central Pennsylvania, which were expecting to have deliveries delayed a week to March 7, Jessica Delp, director of product program and retail for Girl Scouts in the Heart of Pennsylvania, told PennLive.com.
“It’s hiccups as there are with most businesses, but we’re Girl Scouts. We’re resilient,” Delp said. “We’re going to make it.”
On the West Coast, the L.A. Times recently reported that the Samoa and S’Mores cookie varieties are in short supply. Samoas are the second-most-popular cookies sold by the Girl Scouts, behind Thin Mints, according to a 2022 Food Network report.