If you like craft beer and moody rock music — if you like one, odds are good you like the other — something interesting is happening this week. And it's all because of me. Well, sort of.
The story begins in July 2011, when a band called Lower Dens played Schuba's. I was there, and after Lower Dens' set, wound up in a conversation with a couple members of the Baltimore-based band. The next day I had planned to interview a guy named Brian Strumke, who lived in Baltimore at the time, and brews beer under the name Stillwater Artisanal Ales, for a story about gypsy brewers.
I asked the Lower Dens people if they were familiar with Stillwater. They were, and they were big fans. The next morning, after an hour on the phone with Strumke, I mentioned that Lower Dens liked his beer. In a happy and fateful intersection of creativity and locality, Strumke turned out to be a fan of the band, too.
That's where I leave the story.
In the following months, 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. Knowing that he and Lower Dens were in a mutual admiration society, he finally saw an avenue to do it.
(Side note: As my writer friend David informs me, this is an example of ekphrastic art— one form of art created in response to another form of art. Ekphrastic art is often poems based on paintings, but it can also be songs based on paintings, poems inspired by monuments or — why not? — beer based on music).
Hunter quickly agreed to Strumke's plan, and offered up the last song on Lower Dens' second and most recent record, Nootropics. The song is a spacey 12-minute dirge called "In the End is the Beginning."
"It's a song that at once has a lot of weight to it, but not a lot of elements," Hunter said last week from Glasgow, Scotland before playing a concert. "It benefits from creating an ambience with space. Rather than being something that is easy to interpret, it's the song on the record that requires the most of the listener, especially in terms of patience and tolerance for heaviness. I thought that would be the most interesting thing for a guy who wanted to make a beer out of a song."
Strumke was up to it, and the result will be shipped across the country this week; it should be on Chicago's shelves and taps in the coming weeks. Both the bottle and bar coasters will include a QR code that can be scanned for an exclusive performance of the song. Strumke said he plans to continue collaborating with other independent rock bands, including a few notable names he has already approached.
As for this beer itself, which is simply called "Stillwater Sensory Series Vol. 1 Lower Dens," Strumke described it as "a light, crisp saison with flavors and aroma meant to be dark and a slight purple hue."
And, of course, that is a direct reaction to the song.
"I broke the song down to a spectrum of colors and just tried to visualize how it made me feel," Strumke said. "Jana thought I was going to do a dark beer because it's a dark and droning song, but when I envision the song I envision myself in a large white void, but not bright — it's more hazy or smoky or foggy."
Just like his ekphrastic beer.
Though maybe a bit skeptical at first, Hunter said she was impressed with the results.
"Initially it seemed like a crazy idea, but he proved himself the right guy to do it," she said. "If there was any hesitation initially, it was gone when he gave us the idea for the flavor profile. I liked the idea that he didn't take the most obvious route."
Sometimes things just work out at a chance meeting between a music-loving beer writer, a rock band and a brewer.
