Craft Beer and Indie Music Mix it Up

Beer and music have long gone hand in hand There’s an undeniable synergy between both worlds and you’re seeing that synergy now more than ever especially in craft beer.

Craft beer is now an important part of today’s music festivals. From Tennessee’s Bonnaroo festival, which worked closely with Sierra Nevada, to Dover, Delaware’s recent Firefly Festival, which aligned itself with Sam Calagione’s Dogfish Head, – craft beer is now just as much a part of the festival experience as the bands performing on stage.

And the synergy doesn’t stop there. Brewers are actively remixing music and craft beer’s DNA and coming up with all kinds of creative hybrids! Sam Calagione’s Positive Contact box set, with hip-hop producer, Dan the Automator, was a brilliant craft beer and music and culinary mash-up. Lost Abbey’s Tomme Arthur has been running his yearlong Ultimate Box Set series featuring special beers inspired by great rock anthems invoking heaven and hell.

And now Stillwater Artisanal’s Brian Strumke and Baltimore indie-rock band Lower Dens have collaborated for the first in the “Stillwater Sensory Series”- a melding of serious beer and alternative music.

This collaboration began back in 2011 according to Josh Noel, who writes for the Chicago Tribune :

“…Strumke tracked down Lower Dens’ singer and songwriter, Jana Hunter, on Facebook and pitched an idea: What if he made a beer based on one of her songs? Beer inspired by music was an idea Strumke had been mulling for awhile, and it was a natural for him; for 10 years before becoming a brewer, he was an electronica DJ.”

Jana, as it turns out, was also a fan of Brian’s brewing and was so excited by the idea of working on something with him that she quickly offered up “In the End is the Beginning,” the last song from Lower Dens’ “Nootropics,” CD which they’d released earlier this year.

“Stillwater Sensory Series Vol. 1 Lower Dens,” is the brewed result of that collaboration and it’s a music and craft beer mash-up all the way! “Both the bottle and bar coasters will include a QR code,” Noel writes, and it “can be scanned for an exclusive performance of the song.”

Strumke describes his brewed interpretation of the Lower Dens’ song as his first of many collaborations with indie rock bands going forward. Stillwater Sensory Series Vol. 1 Lower Dens is explained as “a light, crisp saison” and its hitting retail now.