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Texas brewery making Buc-ee's Beaver Nugget beer

A sample batch sold out in two hours

FORT WORTH, Texas — Fort Worth-based Panther Island Brewing is creating a new beer made with the famous Beaver Nuggets from Buc-ee’s.

Thursday, the brewery revealed the label for the new beer it's calling "Road Trip Snacks."

“We were just sitting around eating Beaver Nuggets, and I was like, ‘Man, this is so delicious I think it belongs in beer,'” Ryan McWhorter, the owner and founder of Panther Island Brewing, said. “It like, melts in your mouth.”

The brewery made a 12-gallon sample batch a few weeks back to test the market using a recipe from a brewer name Sandra. Those batches usually last a day. This one lasted just a couple of hours.

“With it being gone in two hours, that told me that people are really loving this and maybe we need to look further into it,” McWhorter said. “A lot of people have been calling. A lot of people have been coming up here to the taproom and asking.”

The new full batch is being made by dumping in 100 pounds — that's 123 bags — of the nuggets. It’s an English brown ale that has that same sweet taste as the nuggets.

It takes a few weeks to make, but Panther Island Brewing is planning a taproom release for April 18 and then will put it in Buc-ee’s stores and others in the next few weeks after that. Pre-orders not only cover this batch, but many more to come.

“It’s throwing us for a wild loop in the best way,” McWhorter said. “It’s gonna get crazy.”

The hope is that just like the snack, the beer becomes a Texas favorite. In the future, McWhorter plans to add more flavors to match the different Beaver Nugget flavors, including milk chocolate and even a barrel-aged version of the beer.

“It would be amazing if this would become a staple,” McWhorter said.

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