What is pickle beer? Why the drink became a South Dakota food favorite
Makenzie Huber
This article is about one of 18 South Dakota food favorites. For the complete list, go here.
Pickle beer: The famous South Dakota Martini – beer paired with a pickle spear.
Ordering a pickle in your beer in South Dakota is akin to ordering a side of ketchup or ranch with your fries.
At least, it's starting to become that way for people under 30.
It's the "South Dakota Martini" — plopping a pickle spear into a cup of, typically, light draft beer, said Jeremy Deutsch, manager of Cubby's Bar in Brookings. The trend follows the original South Dakota martini that started in the '80s, which involved dunking a few olives in beer.
"We've had several people from out of state, just as you're pouring a beer and adding pickles into it, ask what we're putting in the beer," Deutsch said. "It's a regional think at least in the Midwest — you have it in Minnesota and Nebraska sometimes — but it's really a South Dakota niche, I think."
He remembers the trend really starting to gain traction around the mid-2000s. Since then, Cubby's has had to increase its order of pickles to a five-gallon bucket of pickles each week.
But Mat Zeman, owner of Carey's Bar in Vermillion, said he remembers pickle beer being ordered when he first started working at bars in Vermillion 20 years ago.
"I started in '99. Pickle beer wasn't an outrageous order then," Zeman said. "But it wasn't a regular thing either."
Pickle beer has only started to trend among younger drinkers in the last 10 years, the two bartenders estimated. Zeman has to buy two and a half gallons of pickles every 10 days because of the demand. What he commonly sees is more red beer when the sun is still out and pickle beer ordered more often once the night hits.
According to Laura Aragon, a manager at Cubby's, she'll often see people order a pickle with their first beer of the night and transition to a regular beer for their second drink.
"A lot of times the salt will balance things off," Aragon said. "It helps you drink them faster."