Metal & Craft Beer Thrash-Up with Pig Destroyer’s Scott Hull

During the recent GWAR B-Q, I was lucky enough to spend a few minutes with one of metal and craft beer collaboration’s greats, Scott Hull of Virginia’s grindcore band Pig Destroyer. Their collaboration beer with Three Floyds, Permanent Funeral, is hands-down one of the best DIPAs that this newly converted IPA girl has ever had.

So first and foremost, I like to ask everyone what are your favorite beer styles? What are you drinking right now?

Well being late summer, IPAs and Double IPAs, that’s kinda what I’m into at the moment, but as soon as it starts swinging into fall, I’ll be getting into the stouts, the barleywines. That’s what I’ll be drinking. I mean it’s weird how my tastes follow the seasons. I have no problem switching that up but I have a ton of stouts from last year that I have been collecting, but I don’t have any inclination to have them now.

What are the staple beers that you have in your fridge?

Heady Topper is one of them. I have a guy that…well when eBay was still selling, I know that buying beer online is a bad thing to do, but it was the only way I could find Heady Topper. I bought an allotment of the beer from the dude and after they canned buying beer on eBay, I kept in touch with him. So every couple months, I have a 12-pack sent down to me. That and Surly Abrasive. Which have similar hop and malt profiles. I love those beers. And I love Dogfish Head World Wide Stout. When it’s time to go to bed and watch Law and Order, you drink a heavy stout and go to sleep. Nothing beats that. It’s better than cough syrup. I mean, it doesn’t taste like cough syrup, it just puts you right out. You know what I’m saying – it’s significantly better than cough syrup! Also I think Three Floyds did a fucking bang up job with Permanent Funeral.

How did you guys hook up with Three Floyds?

Dave Witte (drummer – Municipal Waste). Obviously, there’s a bunch of metal heads at Three Floyds and I asked Dave to get me in touch with someone at Three Floyds. Those guys are super cool. I actually talked to Chris Boggess (Three Floyds head brewer) the other day and they are brewing up another batch of Permanent Funeral in a few weeks for the GABF. I think they are going to enter it into a contest. So keep your ears out. In like a month, there should be another batch out.

Did you guys have some input into what you wanted for the beer?

Yeah, a little bit. I mean, those guys are the magicians and I know to let them do what they do best, but we wanted a souped-up version of Zombie Dust, which is also one of my staple beers. And I’m lucky enough to have that in my fridge because they sent me cases of that shit.

Do you brew at home?

Every now and again, I look at wanting to do that. But I know that I’ll fuck it up. I don’t want to brew 54 bottles of some shit no one will ever drink. I know where my strengths are, and my strengths are not chemistry. I’m a musician and I know how to approach writing an album or recording a song. I wouldn’t even know where to begin making beer. I know I’d fuck it up in the early stages and come up with non-carbonated swill. I know where my strengths are. I make music. I love movies but I wouldn’t know how to make a movie. It’s just like making beer. It’s so highly nonlinear and complicated.

So who are some of your favorite local VA brewers?

Hardywood is really good. They are local and we love them. Their Gingerbread Stout is fantastic.  

Metal and craft beer. There is something going on here. What do you think the chemistry is here that makes this work?

To me, the topology of the craft beer scene is very similar to the way the underground music scene was before you could just download anything. There are people on the beer sites that have the skuttlebutt on what’s coming out at this brewery or that brewery and they know exactly where their beer’s going to be and when. It’s the same thing that happened in underground music and tape trading. It’s almost identical and so cool. And all these craft breweries are super passionate about what they are doing. They aren’t concerned with mass production or making it big, they just want to brew a really fantastic beer. People in the underground music scene don’t do what we do to make it big, we do what we love… so it’s incredibly similar and it’s really exciting.