Visualizing Songs as Craft Beer
Hi, my name is Harper and I do a weird thing; I like to materialize songs as beer. Artists and song writers work hard to create dimension, texture, and volume with music, each note and movement inciting emotions and conjuring a sense of place. So is it really all that different, I think, for brewers to do the same thing with beer?
Music is very central to my life. It’s playing at all points of my day from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep, and even as I sleep. As I type this I’m listening to a mix of early-aughts emo in the Funky Picnic cafe and a band called “Tropical F*ck Storm” (abbreviation my own) in the brewery. For every beer we brew at Funky Picnic there’s almost certainly a song attached to it. Some brews are even direct attempts to materialize a song as a beer, foolhardy a task as that may be.
So in the spirit of Record Store Day, let’s take a look at some of the beers we’ve brewed at Funky Picnic and the songs which inspired them.
Hollywood Cole - Ginger Peach Saison |
This song tells a story about visiting clubs in Atlanta and the types of people who frequent them. One of these people is named “Hollywood Cole,” a person who takes off his shirt and asks if anyone wants to fight him. I’m not a violent person, but I am from East Texas and well… sometimes my shirt comes off, so I feel like I relate to this person. Also, this song features such a deep and heavy groove that will not be denied. The whole song is rich, but not overly sweet. It’s very well balanced between the groove and the vocals, the subject matter and the delivery.
It made sense to me to use peach in this beer as the band is from Atlanta, but I also wanted something to balance that peach just as the song is balanced. The ginger does this pretty well in the beer, and the addition of Brettanomyces gives it that soft funk to make the beer sing. It’s funky, it’s sweet, it’s balanced, it’s complex enough to make you think quietly to yourself and yet…it’s just easy enough to bob your head and enjoy.
Make Springtime Sing - Farmhouse Saison | Annuals “Springtime”
The opening piano in this song is simply beautiful, in every sense of the phrase. It’s just a few notes dancing on top of pulsing chords, but it immediately conjures a certain feeling of relief, of something new. One of the attractive aspects of Saisons is their simplicity and the way the beer is greater than the sum of its parts. They’re brewed with just a few grains, one or two hops, and a rustic yeast strain…and that’s it. The terroir very much has a role to play in these beers.
What Annuals do in this song so well is create a wonderful soundscape and a sense of place. You can close your eyes and imagine flowers pushing through soil and turning their heads to the sun. You can see waves of grass bowing in the wind and birds on the wing. I wanted this beer to create the same sense of place, to be something so perfectly simple and yet grandiose. I wanted notes of honey, notes of fruit, notes of SPRING. I was very excited about this beer.
Don’t Call Me Mike — Imperial Berlinerweisse with Pink Guava | Five Iron Frenzy’s “All The Hype”
This is probably the most tongue-in-cheek beer we’ve done at Funky Picnic. Well…it’s more a series of beers. There’s something called “hype beers,” beers which have so much exaggerated enthusiasm around them that one has to wonder (or at least I do) “is this actually a good beer?” These beers boast very bold, very loud flavors and they’re very often overly fruited or overly hopped. And yet…they sell. They sell very well, and in accordance with our motto “Craft Beer For Every Taste” we offer some of these beers. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be a bit of an ass about it.
So Five Iron Frenzy has this song called “All the Hype” wherein they mock how bands use hype to move units and well…I use lyrics from this song to name our series of hype beers. Other lyrics from the song are “In the beginning was the hype,” “When Brad says ‘hype’ you do or die,” and “Sucka emcees just stand and cry.” It’s a bit meta, yes…but it makes me laugh. For this version we stuck with the “fruited sour” style of beer and looked to pink guava to give us the tropical fruit notes we CRAVED. What’s fun about this beer name is I often lament how people who just meet me insist on calling me “Mike,” even after I introduce myself as “Michael,” so you know…it works on a few levels.
Wolf Am IPA — IPA | mewithoutYou’s “Wolf Am I! (And Shadow)”
mewithoutYou’s lead singer Aaron Weiss is a brilliant person and quite eccentric. There’s great lore about him and many who have worked with him or toured with him have stories that feel larger and stranger than life. For example, Weiss spent some time as a “Freegan,” someone who eats food that’s been thrown out as a form of radical environmentalism. Weiss also doesn’t drink alcohol so it felt a little weird for me to brew something inspired by his lyrics, but I tried to embrace the freegan attitude as a bit of a nod to him. So when I first brewed this beer, I only used ingredients I already had on hand that would have been tossed out otherwise.
He has a lyric that goes “as I walk heavy on delicate ground,” and that was my jumping off point for this recipe. I used plenty of earthy and herbal hops — the “heavy” aspect — and placed them on top of a delicate and soft grain bed. When I brew song-inspired beers I always try to reach out to the artist first to get their blessing. When I reached out to mewithoutYou’s management, they mentioned they always joked about naming a beer “Wolf Am IPA” as word play on the title of this song. So of course I had to use that name! mewithoutYou is one of my very favorite bands and constantly inspire me, so be on the lookout for more of these beers.
Courage and Pillars — Imperial Berlinerweisse with Blueberry and Cardamom | Midlake’s “Bethel Woods”
Another one of my absolute favorite bands is Denton, Texas’ own Midlake. I had reached out to the band previously and asked if I could name a beer after one of their songs. And when I saw they were coming to Ft. Worth for a pair of shows last year, I knew I wanted to work with them again. This beer is more of a collaboration between Funky Picnic and the band, and we even had the opportunity to serve this beer at their Ft. Worth and Denton shows!
Their drummer, Mackenzie Smith, might be the best drummer in DFW and this track really shows it. The song opens with these great, crisp drums — crisp like an autumn wind. This song is also inspired by the farm where Woodstock was held, and at the time we released this beer blueberries were in season in the Northeast, so we chose that as our fruit. Again, I wanted something to balance the sweetness and “coolness” of the fruit and went with something crisp and warm. Enter cardamom. It’s a flavor combination that always sounds a little weird, but worked really well in the beer.
I’m Right! I’m Smart! I’m Right! Belgian Pale Ale | Bomb the Music Industry’s “(Shut) Up the Punx!”
I don’t know exactly why, but I always think hops when I hear punk rock and fast paced music. Maybe it’s the dankness of it, maybe it’s the way certain hop flavors are tasted differently by everyone, maybe because it’s considered “rebellious” to let these flavors stand over other flavors. I could analyze that one for ages. So when I heard this song I immediately thought “hops” and knew this beer would be a pounder.
Like a good punk song, “(Shut) Up the Punx!” has a nice air of irony and rebellion to it. This barn burner pokes fun at those in the punk scene for conforming to non-conformity. (I also suspect the song is poking fun of another song titled “Up the Punx,” but that’s just a guess.) Hoppy beers are en vogue, hell they have been for as long as this wave of craft beer has been rolling. And as “rebellious” as hoppy beers may be (or once were) there’s an element of conformity happening around them. EVERYBODY has a hazy beer.
This beer uses Styrian Wolf and Styrian Dragon hops, hops which boast flavors of lemon, flowers, berries, mango, and coconut. See what I mean about hops tasting like a bunch of different things? It’s that balance of flowers and berries that sounds like the horns in the song to me. So in the end we have an easy-gulping beer with an incredibly complex aroma and deeply floral and fruity flavors. Is for fun.
Ten Percent Demon Barrel-aged Barleywine | Over the Rhine’s “What I’ll Remember Most”
This one, this is the song that started it all. This is the first time I ever heard a song and thought “I have to make this into something I can drink.” Every time I hear this song I visualize an old dusty church with stained glass windows, sun piercing through the sanctuary as the smell of old hymnals and church pews lingers.
It’s a beer that’s meant to be sipped, to be contemplated, to be nurtured. I wanted that wood… that squeaky wood character and a top note boozy as bourbon. Barleywine was an easy choice here. It’s rich and mellow in its complexity, stiff enough to stay around on the palate and deep enough to get lost. Barleywine as a style is also a divisive one as not everyone enjoys this beer, and I get it. The name itself is off-putting; beer drinkers balk at it being called “wine” and wine drinkers balk at this boozy, hoppy monstrosity that has the utter GALL to liken itself to its fermented cousin.
There’s a lot of spiritual imagery in this song, and that may or may not be your bag. But it’s an absolutely gorgeous song, and that line “You were 80% angel, 10% demon, the rest is hard to explain” burrowed into my soul and refused to wrest itself. “Whoever brought me here is gonna have to take me home” also caught me in my tracks, and fitting for a beer I think.
Author: Michael Harper
Harper is a passionate brewer who believes yeast is a flavor, Saaz are the best hops, and cats are better than dogs.