CHICAGO – For years, Tom Seefurth drank what he called “lawn-mower beer” – mass-produced, canned brew best suited for drinking while mowing the lawn.

Then he tried a small Oregon brewery’s dark, rich stout and everything changed. He realized beer could be art.

The real estate broker and father of two turned part of his garage into a brewery – he added a refrigerator, brewing equipment and hung beer cans from the ceiling – and went to work. He crafted porters. He crafted pale ales.

And last fall, he came up with something he swears will revolutionize the world’s favorite 5 p.m. drink: pizza beer.

While there are no pizza chunks in the reddish-brown ale (the biggest misconception Seefurth fights), the brew does include ingredients and an aroma generally associated with marinara sauce: tomatoes, garlic, basil and oregano.

Already on tap at one Aurora, Ill., restaurant as Mamma Mia Pizza Beer, mocked by Jay Leno on national TV and the hot topic of discussion among home brewers – for better and for worse – Seefurth plans to incorporate still more food flavors into beers in a movement he calls “culinary brewing.”

Salsa beer. Curry beer. Oatmeal raisin cookie beer. He has tried them all.

While the notion of such brews may cause noses to turn up and faces to scowl, Seefurth asks:

Please don’t judge his creations too soon.

“The pizza beer is not for the Saturday night bowling alley,” said Seefurth, 43. “But it will appeal to a wide range of people if they keep an open mind.”

Restaurants are increasingly treating beer like wine and pairing it with food, but Seefurth claims to be the first to pair food and beer in one frosty mug. Or as he prefers, a wine glass, where his beers can be swirled, contemplated and tasted in all their robustness.

He hopes to strike a deal with a small regional brewery to get the drink on tap in Italian restaurants.

In a home-brew industry surging back to life after peaking about 10 years ago, the pizza beer reflects a growing ambition, experts said. Spices like oregano and basil were among the flavors in beer for hundreds of years before today’s most common flavor, hops, was added, in part because hops act as a preservative.

But industrywide, spices are being reasserted as prime flavor ingredients.

“People are trying new things,” said Charlie Finkel, owner of The Pike Brewing Co. in Seattle. “I am fascinated by pizza beer. But from my point of view, I don’t know why you’d want to put the pizza in there. … But when I was last forced to drink mass-marketed beer – Shiner, in my case, because I was in Texas – I would mix it with tomato juice and it made it a lot more palatable. So maybe it would work.”

Randy Mosher, a Chicago beer author, educator and lecturer, called pizza beer a “goofy idea,” and said Seefurth is one of the area’s more eccentric beermakers. But he complimented Seefurth for trying to come up with a beer that accompanies Italian food – a niche that is currently unfilled. He also said he admires the product.

“It’s much better than you might think,” Mosher said. “It’s definitely gimmicky, but sometimes gimmicky is what you need. People have their habits, and sometimes a gimmick jars them out of their complacency.”



Seefurth said he came up with the idea Labor Day weekend, when he had his mind on beer and noticed a pile of fresh tomatoes on his counter. In his home brewery, where beer cans, bumper stickers, plastic signs and cardboard cutouts cover the walls, he brewed a batch and was shocked that it worked.

“We’d thought it would taste like bloody mary mix with beer,” he said. “But when it tasted like pizza …”

While judging a home-brew contest, Seefurth approached Mike Rybinski, brew master at Walter Payton’s Roundhouse in Aurora, and suggested they brew up a batch. The award-winning Rybinski had crafted 70 styles, but nothing like pizza beer.

“He’s always making something,” Rybinski said. “He’s definitely not afraid to try new stuff.”

They brewed the beer over the course of a day in April, dumping in two kegs of canned tomatoes, 450 cloves of garlic and, for effect, two pizzas (sans cheese and oils) that were strained from the final product. The batch of 10 barrels – about 375 gallons – fermented for a month before being tapped in May. It is expected to be at the Roundhouse bar for another month.

“Two kegs of tomatoes?” Rybinski said. “That’s crazy. I was laughing the whole time I was making it.”


The beer has sold reasonably well and is served as Seefurth does at home – in a wine glass. Many try it out of curiosity, like a group of teachers who were celebrating the last day of school recently with lunch at the Roundhouse.

“It’s good, but it’s not like if you were working in the garden you would want to pop one,” said Anne Schmidt, 48.

Fellow teacher Stacy Nemec said her first reaction to pizza beer was simple: “Um, gross.” But it was better than expected, she said.

“It’s a sipping beer,” she said. “You can really taste the oregano. It would be really good with pizza.”

That’s the exact reaction that makes Seefurth optimistic. He said he has discussed a licensing deal with three breweries and at least one “major player, someone big-time” in the restaurant industry. He just wants to maintain control over the recipe and the marketing.

“It’s the most different thing on the market right now,” he said. “I know I’ll be brewing it somewhere.”

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(c) 2007, Chicago Tribune.

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PHOTOS (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): WBS-PIZZABEER

AP-NY-06-21-07 0608EDT