New Frozen Dinner Uses Alabama Craft Beer

Here at CraftBeer.com, we love to talk about cooking with beer. Now, an Alabama craft brewery is working with a national frozen food company on a new frozen dinner made with beer.

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Back Forty Beer Co. out of Gadsden, Alabama, is working with Stouffer’s on Beer Glazed Meatballs. The new frozen dinner is meatballs glazed in Back Forty’s Truck Stop Honey Brown Ale — a silver medal winner in the Specialty Honey Beer category at the 2010 Great American Beer Festival — served over cheddar mashed potatoes.

The brewery’s COO, Tripp Collins, says a former intern who now works at Nestlé, Stouffer’s parent company, helped spark the collaboration.

(RECIPE: Simple Beer BBQ Sauce)

“When they began to look a different dishes for this product line, beer was one of the things they wanted to create with. And our former intern mentioned that she used to work for a brewery,” Collins tells AL.com.

The brewery describes Truck Stop Honey as a medium-bodied English brown ale made with Alabama Wildflower Honey, roasted malts and fresh hops. Back Forty supplied Stouffer’s with around 500 gallons of beer for the frozen dinner collaboration.

You can find Beer Glazed Meatballs with Back Forty’s Truck Stop Honey Brown Ale in grocery stores this fall.

Jess Baker

Jess Baker walked into a beer fest in 2010 and realized beer had come a long way from what her dad had been drinking since the 70s. She served as editor-in-chief of CraftBeer.com from spring 2016 to spring 2020, bringing you stories about the people who are the heartbeat behind U.S. craft brewing. She's a runner, a die-hard Springsteen fan, a mom who is always scouting family-friendly breweries, and always in search of a darn good porter.

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