A bad cherry harvest once forced New Glarus brewmaster Dan Carey to improvise.

What came out of that problem was Serendipity.

Now the New Glarus Brewing Company fruit beer has been nominated as one of 108 products competing in the 2026 Coolest Thing Made in Wisconsin contest, an annual statewide competition organized by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.

The story behind Serendipity may be nearly as unusual as the beer itself. A severe drought devastated Wisconsin’s cherry crop, leaving Carey with fewer cherries than expected. He combined what cherries he could obtain with apples and cranberries, then aged the fruit in oak with wild fermentation. The resulting beer became what the brewery has described as a “happy accident.”