French pastry-inspired beer to see limited release in local stores

Brewery Vivant and Propaganda Doughnuts have teamed up to create a Belgian style dark ale brewed with black currants, vanilla beans and rose petals. Originally an exclusive in-house only release this past Thursday, Vivant is going to issue a very limited retail batch to the West Michigan and Lansing areas. 

In keeping with Propaganda's espionage themed branding, the ale is appropriately dubbed "Agent a Deux." The limited edition sold in four packs will hit stores on Wednesday, August 27. A limited number of small format kegs will populate select area bars.

The unique collaboration with Tory O'Haire, proprietor of Propaganda Doughnuts, played on the French culinary theme.

"We are a Belgian and French inspired brewery and Tory leans heavily on his French culinary background, so when he talked about baking with French flavors, this came into the picture. We had never worked with those flavors together in a beer before," says Kate Avery, Marketing Director. "It was a delicious experiment!"

Simply put, "beer goes with everything. Even doughnuts," says Vivant Owner Jason Spaulding. 

 Vivant offers around nine different specialty beers each year that are distributed around West Michigan and Chicago. In addition, in-house small single batches are brewed for Vivant pub goers. Vivant has done two collaboration beers in the past, one with the popular New Belgium Brewing out of Colorado and the other with the neighboring Rockford Brewing for the Fly2Coq group bicycle ride. A second group ride, this time around from Vivant to Rockford, is scheduled for September 27.