Tracks Of My Beers

January 6, 2012, by Crafty Pint

Tracks Of My Beers

If there’s one things we enjoy more than quality beer at Crafty Towers (yes – more!), it’s quality tunes. The only thing better, as the neighbours had the misfortune to discover on New Year’s Eve, is quality beer and quality music in harmony. In fact, the desire to have the two paired seems to grow stronger in direct correlation to the amount of beer consumed; actually, come to think of it, the strength of beer tends to increase in direct correlation to the volume of the music too. There’s even a signature tune that marks the exact point at which most guests decide to make their excuses and leave while Mrs Pint begins the joyless task of prying the penultimate beer from her husband’s hand and steering him towards bed (or more usually the sofa).

All of which got us thinking about beer and music matching. After all, plenty of people are matching beer with food, the Yeastie Boys are fond of a bit of beer and pants matching, while British beer writer Pete Brown has tried his hand at a little beer and book pairing.

So, whaddya reckon? Can we – you and us – come up with the definitive (OK, a decent) tracklisting for the world’s beers? Here’s some thoughts to kick things off…

Imperial Stout

Let’s start at the end. When you think Imperial Stout, you invariably think big, black and velvety. Could it be Barry White that fits the picture? If he does, there’s still a choice to be made. Do you go with the drowning-your-sorrows-and-finding-solace of Let the Music Play (the full version) or does the track’s insistence on you shaking your booty make it rather un-Imperial Stouty? 

If that’s the case and you’re into the more sensual big beers – those overflowing with vanilla, rich chocolate and coffee liqueur character – perhaps the choice should be the sound of 5,000 hippos ejaculating simultaneously at the 45 second mark in Never Gonna Give You Up. Or perhaps we should just play it straight with an out-and-out declaration of our feelings for the style with Can’t Get Enough of Your (12.5% ABV) Love? Go on, tell Crafty you can’t picture yourself crooning this in the early hours to a freshly poured glass of oily goodness…

Helles (German Lager)

At the other end of the scale, there’s the finely tuned perfection of a German lager. Taking up the synaesthesia theme of the Pete Brown article linked above, here at Crafty we tend to picture beer flavours as a giant sphere, with this style forming a tiny sphere at its heart; in other words, there might not be a lot there, but what’s there is perfectly balanced and refined, like the cars for which the likes of BMW, Audi and Mercedes are renowned.

Therefore, surely it’s hard to look past the Teutonic masters of understatement, the four men who managed to conjure such emotion while ostensibly being utterly devoid of it. And while it would be nice to maintain the motoring analogy and go with Autobahn, for us it has to be the immaculate rhythms of The Robots that accompanies the beer’s consumption.

An Aussie lager could, of course, be represented by any rock covers band found loitering in the country’s pubs. Or Chris Franklin. Or Cold Chisel pre-Wild Turkey days.

Imperial IPAs

And here we’re talking the intensely bitter type, such as the Moylander, Southern Tier’s Unearthly or Mikkeller 1000 IBU Light. The temptation is to focus on the bitter and go with something like John Grant, who serves up a rich selection on his 2010 album Queen of Denmark; choose from this, this or this, for example – even if none quite reaches the levels of spite of the Super Furry Animal’s Receptacle for the Respectable. Here, the tune’s initial jolliness masks such lyrical treats as “Welcome as a storm cloud in the late December gloom / Subtle as a nail bomb in the head / You came to me in peace and left me in pieces.”

Judge for yourself…

That said, music is littered with tales of bitter revenge, so perhaps it’s too easy a line to take. Perhaps we should instead focus on the lip-puckering, tongue-stripping, in-your-fucken-faceness of such beers and plump for something from Aphex Twin’s darker side – Come To Daddy or Ventolin – or invite a necromunching Iggy Pop into the house for a jar or two instead? Alternatively, you could go the whole hog and pair your 1000 IBU Light with some Passenger of Shit, a pairing that anyone who stayed up late at the ATP Festival on Mt Buller in 2009 or is part of the NSW crapcore scene will no doubt confirm is rather apposite. We won’t link to any of his tunes, however, although if you are tempted to go hunting, the favourite at Crafty Towers is the one about staples.

Wee Heavy / Scotch Ale

We’re torn on this one. Just saying the words “Wee Heavy” in a Scottish accent conjures images of Billy Connolly, but as he was called the Big Yin and his back catalogue of songs includes the theme from Supergran, we clearly need to look elsewhere. We’d suggest Wee Jimmy Krankie, but it would mean nothing to anyone from outside the UK and given the Krankies have recently admitted to being swingers, thereby souring many already somewhat twisted childhood memories, it would add a rather unsavoury taste to what’s usually a rich, sweet style.

So perhaps we need to be looking at the gentle harmonies of Teenage Fanclub. Or, if it’s a particularly multi-layered affair, such as that released by 4 Pines at last year’s Great Australian Beer SpecTAPular, how about a leap across the water to Northern Ireland and a nod for Loveless era My Bloody Valentine?

Sour Ales

While we’re in the UK, Arab Strap and in particular misanthropic crooner Aidan Moffat deserve a shout for carving out much of their career on the back of bleary-eyed laments about pretty much everything. They also deserve to appear in any article about music on the strength of one of the greatest opening lines to any album, but given they no longer exist, had too much humour and hope in their hearts to be truly sour, and given that sours are the choice of the cool beer geeks these days (if that’s not an oxymoron) perhaps we need something more contemporary. And, given this has been a pop-free zone so far, let’s plump for little Justin Bieber as anything that passes his lips is bound to leave a sour taste.

Or, if that really is too much to bear, how’s about we focus on the funky side of things, courtesy of Daft Punk; bottle of Cantillon in hand, oversized headphones in place, volume up high, strutting like a mofo…

Black IPA

Done right, these can be a tale of the unexpected, offering the drinker a whack of hops when they’re expecting roastiness. It could be The Beatles going psychedelic, Bob plugging in, or Bowie going drum ‘n’ bass. Or, indeed, anything from Die Antwoord

That said, this could go on forever (what do you mean “It already has”?) and there are scores of beers we’ve yet to consider: collaborative beers, raspberry ales, old ales, Stella Artois and many more, including anything from Moon Dog:

So, over to you: do you have songs that conjure thoughts of certain beers or vice-versa, or albums you turn to when embarking into a session? Have you got better matches for the styles above? Can we come up with a collection of stone cold classic tunes to match any beer? Surely we can…

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