A beer fit for Thor
Ga.’s Creature Comforts is tapped for stardom
Georgia brewery has a blockbuster hit.
The God of Thunder swigs craft beer? That’s one of the many revelations in “Avengers: Endgame,” which has amassed more than $2 billion at the box office and is chasing the $2.8 billion alltime global record held by “Avatar.”
His brand of choice? Creature Comforts Brewing Co.
The first inkling that the Athens, Georgia, brewery was sure to be tapped for a cameo in the blockbuster film came when a trailer released in April showed a can of its German wheat beer Athena in a scene with Thor (Chris Hemsworth).
That potential for some super-heroic product placement grew from the fondness some of the Marvel Studios production crew had for the beer when filming in Atlanta in 2017.
The brewery’s beer “became a thing, if you will, around the set,” said Creature Comforts CEO Chris Herron. “It got into the hands of some of the higher-ups, as we understand, and obviously they knew they had a need for beer” in the story line, he says.
“But we had no idea how prevalent it would be, at the time, to the story line,” Herron said. (Spoiler alert: Thor has become a quaffmeister whose godly sixpack has decayed due to his hankering for guzzling six-packs.)
The Marvel movie people eventually asked to talk to the beer people. Then, the production asked for some beer and a 2XL T-shirt.
“We didn’t even have double XLs at the time. We had to ask our T-shirt company to make us one,” Herron said. “That led to two years of wondering, ‘Who is going to wear the double XL?’ Maybe the Hulk is going to smash out of it or something, but he doesn’t wear Tshirts.
“We thought about Thor, but he’s always in his costume.”
Fast forward to about two weeks ago. The brewery bought out two showings of the film when it opened, so employees could watch. Seeing the initial shot of Thor and the can of Athena early in the film “was great,” Herron said.
But later, when the character Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) tries to get Thor to leave New Asgard and go with him because he has beer, “there was like eight minutes of suspense,” he said. “Oh, gosh, please let it be (our) beer.”
Then, when Thor returns holding a can of Creature Comforts’ India pale ale Tropicália, “there was quite an eruption of cheers and excitement and popcorn being thrown in the air,” Herron said.
Thor (Hemsworth) does wear that Tshirt, too.
That Disney-owned Marvel Studios chose a small, independent brewery such as Creature Comforts to highlight in the film “is an incredible win for our staff, for Georgia beer and for craft beer,” Herron said.
Has business gotten better? Well, even with an expansion last year, Creature Comforts can hardly keep with demand locally.
But it has gotten some “unique inquiries” to distribute beer to China and Asia, for instance. Herron’s response: “Eh, not yet. But thanks for reaching out.”
The situation has got “us on a lot of people’s radar,” he said.
Beyond that, the brewery’s beer is “memorialized,” he said. In “The Big Lebowski,” Jeff Bridges’ character “the Dude” drank White Russians, and “Thor drinks Trop.”
The brewery is now going to make the beer available in tall-boy 16-ounce cans because “that 12oz Tropicália can looked kinda small in a certain Avenger’s hand,” it tweeted last week.