A new "Star Trek"-themed beer warped into stores in Canada in November, and it's making a splash.
A Klingon ale concept made it big last month after a Canadian brewery heard that it had approval from "Star Trek" creators to make the beer. A company in Vulcan, Alberta, collaborated with Nova Scotia's Garrison Brewing to create the Klingon Warnog Roggen Dunkel Ale in time for a comic convention in Halifax in November.
"We’re beer geeks and a lot of us are sci-fi geeks, so it was a pretty logical fit," said Brian Titus, the president and co-founder of Garrison. "We just love the idea of doing it. The neat thing about 'Star Trek' is over the years, there have been so many variations of it. It's gone on in some different form for decades, and everyone can relate to it." [Poll: ;Star Trek' vs. 'Star Wars': Who Wins?]
And the response to the Warnog ale was far more than what Titus, who created his craft-beer brewery in 1997, ever expected. In fact, it led to a brief Klingon invasion of his Halifax-based location.
Klingon Warnog: A warrior's ale
When Federation approached Garrison in hopes that a Canadian brewery would make a beer with them, Titus said he jumped at the opportunity. It was up to his brewery to create the recipe, so he decided to go for the unexpected.
The base was a dark German weissbeer, which is usually light and hazy, but Garrison added chocolate, dark malts and spices to change things up. "There's a lot of neat things going on in this brew," Titus told Space.com.
Warnog is a Klingon alcoholic beverage that is not quite as popular as bloodwine, according to "Star Trek"-themed site Memory Beta, but it was mentioned on television in shows like "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
A beer with honor
In this case, a healthy contingent of Klingons showed up in association with Hal-Con (a comic convention held Nov. 7-9). The local Klingon Assault Group, which does a number of charity events, not only drank the beer but helped serve it to other willing clients, Titus said.
"We knew it would tap a nerve, but we didn't realize it was quite as big a nerve as we saw," he said. "We had long-time customers – we've never exchanged the words 'Star Trek' before – come in wearing some T-shirt from back in the day and picking up a four-pack."
Even after paying Paramount a licensing fee, the brewery still turned a healthy profit and is looking to get the ale on the shelves in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. More "Star Trek" brew is coming in the future, Titus added.
"We'll definitely be doing this beer again," Titus said. "Then there's also the Vulcan ale in the lineup as a potential brew for us to do here, and there are a couple of other ideas that could stew around."
You can learn more about the Klingon Warnog brew at the Federation of Beer website: http://www.federationofbeer.com/.
Editor's note: This story was updated on Dec. 13 to correct the term weissbeer, not vice beer.
Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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