1 Beer 1 Song

This week we sit down with Nick Nock, head brewer of Atlanta's own SweetWater Brewing Company, and talk about their LowRYEder IPA. The interview was recorded in one of SweetWater's cavernous tasting rooms, hence the soothing din of HVAC in the background. Since we had the ear of the man who brews the stuff, we dig in to some of the finer details of the LowRYEder recipe. We also talk about Sweetwater's massive expansion from a 50-barrel brewhouse to a 400-barrel brewhouse, which is nearing completion. The song is "Something Stank" from George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, who, COINCIDENTALLY, will be headlining this year's SweetWater 420 Fest. People of Atlanta, this year's 420 Fest is your chance to see P-Funk for free. That is all.

We drink Silent Night from Mother Earth Brewery in Kinston, NC. Kinston is in the Eastern part of North Cackylacky, near absolutely nothing (according to Google Maps). Mother Earth started sending beer to Georgia in 2012. Silent Night is a delicious stout, which is a good thing, because, as we failed to mention on the recording, Silent Night costs $20 for a 750ML bottle. Not sure how I feel about that. We do not listen to a NEW RADIOHEAD song, because there isn't a NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM that was just released. We actually listen to a song from a Thom Yorke side project. Thom Yorke is best known as the SINGER FOR RADIOHEAD. The project is called Atoms For Peace (Site features autoplay audio, no I'm not kidding) and features Flea and some other dudes. I ended up having stronger feelings than I expected about the song, much to Russ's delight. Mea culpa: I am aware I used the phrase "bleeps and bloops" (or some version of that) FAR too many times, and I am sorry for that. The song is called What The Eyeballs Did, and it doesn't seem to appear on the track listing for AMOK, so I have no idea what is going on. RADIOHEAD RADIOHEAD RADIOHEAD.

Ugh. Yes, we listened to and discussed a Blink-182 song, mostly unironically. More on that in a second. We quaffed a 32oz. "growlette" of a beer from Twain's Billiard & Tap called Dirty DIPA. This beer is credited to Twain's because it was brewed at Twain's, but it is actually a collaboration between Twain's and Sweetwater. The Dirty DIPA is an interesting beer and we have a long, contemplative discussion about it. We understand it is probably more fun for us to drink beer and talk about it than it is for you to listen to us drink beer and talk about it. We understand. Blink-182. Sigh. Russ mentioned a while back that he saw they had something new coming out. At first, I laughed it off. But then I realized it could be a good opportunity for us to explore a song that causes me pain as opposed to the way we usually do it (with the Russ and the pain). My only regret is that we actually played the whole song. I need some Carly Rae Jepsen to cleanse my palate after this and I am not even kidding a little bit when I say that. A THING WE FAILED TO MENTION ON THE PODCAST: Dirty DIPA is part of the Georgia Craft Brewers Guild Collaboration Series. A portion of the proceeds from each of the beers in the series will help the GCBG continue to advance the interests of Georgia Craft Brewers. Other Collaborations in the series include(ed): Terrapin & Moon River, Wrecking Bar & Wild Heaven, and Max Lagers & O'Dempsey's.

We ring in the new year with a celebration of deliquency--reviewing a beer and song both firmly lodged in 2012. The beer is the Vertical Epic Ale series from Stone Brewing Co., which is actually eleven beers. We reviewed all eleven beers dating back to February, 2002 and we got so drunk that Russ wrote and recorded a 16-minute drum solo and I tried to drink a futon. LOL SIKE WUT! We drank two vintages from the Vertical Epic series. Listen for the deets. The song is from last year's Menzingers album, On The Impossible Past. I am on the record as a Menzingers fan, and, despite listening to OTIP when it was released, it didn't get much time in my ear holes last year. So, I wanted to get them into the 1 Beer 1 Song archive before their last album gets too terrible old. Get this, Russ likes it. Don't let him tell you otherwise. CORRECTION: In this episode, I talked all about how the Menzingers are on Fat Wreck Chords. Turns out they are on Epitaph Records. Anyone familiar with these two labels will surely understand the mistake, but that doesn't make it any less incorrect. Starting out the new year right! Sigh ...

We wrap up the year with 3 beers, 3 songs, and a whole lot of navel gazing. Obviously, that much content takes a little longer to get through. This episode weighs in at 1 hour 9 minutes and change. If that makes you tired to read, just know that I cut out A LOT of aimless rambling. The three beers are Anchor Brewing's 2012 Our Special Ale, The Meddler from Odell Brewing, and Firestone Walker's very tasty Double Jack Double IPA. The songs are "Spiritual Rights" from the High on Fire album Vermis de Mysteriis, "Letter in Icelandic from the Nanette San" off John K. Samson's Provincial album, and "True North" from the upcoming Bad Religion release of the same name. We weave together the beers and songs with some earnest reflection on 2012 and some light name-calling. The final version of this episode came out noticeably quiet overall, perhaps because of its overall gerth, or, more likely, because I am a moron. One of my resultions for the new year is to establish some audio consistency if not actual audio quality. Bye.

R5 Whiskey from Charbay is whiskey distilled from an entire batch of Bear Republic's Racer 5 IPA. Now that I have your attention, we obtained a bottle and drank it. And by we, I mean Russ, myself, and SETH! Seth has been a quasi-intentional influence on the show on a number of different occasions, so we were glad to finally sit down and chat with him, you know, ON THE RECORD. So, yeah, Hop Flavored Whiskey. I'm not sure if we did a good job explaining that this is not actually whiskey that has been flavored with hops, rather it is a whiskey that has been distilled from a very hoppy beer. In fact, if I saw this on the shelf, the phrase Hop Flavored Whiskey would make me think, "Wow, that sounds gross," and I loooooooooooooove hops. You know what liquor needs a hop-flavored version? Gin. Seriously, you guys, hop flavored gin. You guys. CHARBAY!! Hop flavored gin. Tequila might also work. Anyway, this whiskey is much better than the label makes it sound. We drink it and talk about it. So, you know, listen to the episode if you're into hearing us ... do that. Seth picked the song. I gave him the parameters that it should be either new or important. He went with a track of the recently releases solo album from Death Cab's Ben Gibbard. The album is called Former Lives and the song is called Bigger Than Love. It is a duet with Aimee Man. LISTEN TO IT.

We've been getting a little full of ourselves lately, so we thought we'd kick it old school with an episode that only lasts 14 minutes. The Abyss from Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon is one of the best imperial stouts in America, simple as that. We drank a bottle from 2010. No, seriously, I'm not going to waste any more words on you. Russ picked the song this week. The Devil's Crayon by Wild Beasts (pronounced BEE-ahsts). I compared them to David Byrne like six or 18 times during the episode. Upon a second listen, all I hear is a British version of Rusted Root. Which is to say ... not really my cup of tea. But that's totally fine! Some of my best friends are not really my cup of tea. You know I didn't mean it like that. Come on.

Nothing like starting an episode with a 90-second correction. We reviewed Elevated IPA from La Cumbre Brewing Company in Albuquerque, NM under the assumption it won the Gold medal for American IPA at GABF this year. Well, it did win the Gold Medal for American IPA at GABF. Problem is, it won last year (2011). This year's honors go to the IPA from Tap It Brewing Company in San Luis Obispo, CA. Following the post-mortem investigation, I realized that if any of the "2011" indicators had been poisonous snakes, I would have been dead weeks before we recorded this. It's written clearly in the email from beerjobber.com, it's written all over the Elevated IPA beer can itself (see upper right corner of can label above), and it is all over the La Cumbre website. Apologies to both breweries. But rather than scrap the episode and re-record it, like even semi-professional, we have opted to make things complicated and awkward. ONWARD! [LOUD WHISPER] HEY, TAP-IT, SEND US SOME IPA SO WE CAN COMPARE IT TO LA CUMBRE. [/LOUD WHISPER] Speaking of beerjobber.com, I have enjoyed using their service so far. They first hooked me with an email right before the presidential election urging people to vote Republican by ordering the NOBAMA BREW from Huebert Brewing in Oklahoma, or vote Democratic by ordering the Entitlement Porter from Blue Point Brewing Company, or vote independent by ordering them both. I ordered them both. We recorded an episode and compared them. At this point, we have no plans to post said episode. If you don't have anything nice to say, something something. Anyway, Beerjobber.com: Approved. We will continue to use them. Following our theme of annual superlatives, we listen to the #1 song on Paste Magazine's 50 Best Songs of 2012, which is "The House That Heaven Built" by Japandroids off their album Celebration Rock. I like Japandroids. I almost love them. But, as we discuss, there's something about two-piece rock groups that I just cannot abide.

We visit Atlanta's own Monday Night Brewing and spend some time with the venerable Jonathan Baker discussing the finer points of recipe formulation, business modeling, and, obviously, Bryan Adams. We drink MNB's Fu Man Brew, a Belgian-style Wit. Before we started recording, Jonathan showed us around the new brewery, which they hope to bring online early in 2013. We are especially interested to see how the combination go-kart track / foam dance party room is going to work. (Following the visit to the brewery, we tacked on a 5-minute review of MNB's Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale. I'm telling you guys, the gifts just don't stop flowing over here. I hope you realize how good you have it.) We let Jonathan pick the song because we are gracious hosts, and that song is called 'Breezeblocks' off the debut album from alt-J called An Awesome Wave. This is not a song that Russ or I would have picked (mostly because of our mutual ignorance of the artist), which leads me to believe that we should have someone else pick the song for every episode. And the beer. And write a script. Now accepting applications for Programming Manager. This is not a ringing endorsement of the song, mind you, it has some nifty parts and it also has some cheezy parts. ANYWAY, listen to this crap. It's awesome. Also, longest episode to date. A note about the audio - the original levels were extremely low, so I ran the speaking portions through Levelator. The results are much better than the original, but there is some harshness in spots. SORRY. At least this isn't some deviation from our normally high audio standards, because it is literally different every time we record.

Once again we start with some songage before moving on to the beerage. I failed to share the beauty of Mastodon with Russ as I had planned in Episode 26, so we get that out of the way right up front. Russ was stoked. The riffage from 3:37 (of the podcast) to the end of the song is the stuff dreams are made of. After the song, I showed off the snazzy 9-second-long Blood and Thunder ringtone I made a couple years ago. You can download it below. That's right, two episodes, two ringtones. I believe ringtones are soon going to be the new text messages, you guys. Invest with confidence. Mastodon - Blood and Thunder ringtone .m4r file (iOS ringtone) Mastodon - Blood and Thunder ringtone .mp3 file So, THE BEER. This week, we happily quaff the 2011 Barley Ryne from Terrapin Beer Company in Athens, GA and Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes (BFM), in Jura, Switzerland. We did an awesome job speculating on the origins of this beer and the version brewed at BFM that preceded it, and ended up saying several things that were probably incorrect. And we actually prepared for this a little bit. I spoke with someone at Terrapin and they set me straight. For the purposes of chronology, we will call them Version 1 and Version 2: Version 1 - Barleywine brewed at BFM in Switzerland in early 2011. Aged in oak Rum barrels. Contains notable (good) funkiness from the barrel-aging process. Served in 11.4 oz. swing-top bottles (pic). This is NOT the beer we're drinking for this episode. Version 2 - Barleywine brewed in September, 2011 at Terrapin. Aged on borbon oak. More representative of a traditional American Barlelywine. Oh, look, here's an info sheet (PDF) on the beer directly from the, er, turtle's mouth. This IS the beer we are drinking in this episode. We have both versions and will likely do a comparison episode at some point in the future. Or not. You're not the boss of us. OH GOD, THE SONG. We listen to Spirits Stampede from Pg. Lost off their recent record, Key. I try, badly, to summarize the genre known by many as post-rock. Russ ... well you'll just have to listen.

New Holland Brewing from Holland, Michigan is new to the Georgia market. We enjoy one of their flagships, the Dragon's Milk Ale Aged in Oak Barrels. And when I say we enjoy it, I mean we enjoyed it, because it is a very enjoyable beer. But you're going to have to be patient because it takes us until the 4:00 mark to even mention the beer. We actually start the episode with a little musical discussion. We were touching base on the Mountain Goats song from Episode 25, and Russ did an impression of what a 'chipped' note sounds like. You can hear this impression at exactly 1:44. It is ... special. So special, in fact, that I isolated the noise and it is now the notification sound my phone makes whenever I receive a text. I'm serious: Click here for the 'chipped' noise .m4r file (iOS ringtone) Click here for the 'chipped' noise .mp3 file The musical conversation continued with a brief analysis of my deep contempt for RUSH, who were playing live in Atlanta when we recorded this episode. Sigh. I just don't get the Neil Peart worship. Stiffest drummer ever. OH LOOK AT ALL MY DRUMS AND PADS AND CYMBALS AND TRIGGERS. I thought about embedding a video for reference, but I'm not sharing my space. If you are having trouble sleeping, watch Peart's solo on David Letterman from last year. Whatever. Let's see, what else. Apparently Russ has some Jewish ancestry he is either suppressing or unaware of because he says Mazel Tov twice in this episode. We analyze Sprayberry Bottle Shop's Twitter handle. Oh right, the song! We headed down the path toward listening to a song from Mastodon, but took a sharp turn at the last second and opted for a song from West End Motel, featuring Mastodon's own Brent Hinds. Russ was nervous at the beginning, but his anxieties were soon eased marking TWO EPISODES IN A ROW he has enjoyed the song. All attempts at description on the podcast and on this blog are failures, so you'll just have to listen. Song starts around the 12:00 mark.

We drink The Cowboy Smoked Pilsner from Evil Twin Brewing. I mention that Evil Twin is from New Zealand. I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE I GOT THAT INFORMATION, but it is wrong. I blame Blake. They are originally from Denmark, but they contract brew all over the place. Regarding the brewery name, Evil Twin, I correctly indicate that the proprietor of Evil Twin, Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø, is the brother of Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, the driving force behind Mikkeller. Whether the name Evil Twin has anything to do with IRL brotherhood, I have no idea. One quarter teaspoon of preparation would have prevented this entire paragraph, and yet, here we are. The beer. It is interesting how the quality of the beer affects the quality of the banter. Smoke, as a flavor, is risky in general, especially so when dealing with a light style like Pilsner. We struggled a little bit with this one, not going to lie. The song. I like the Mountain Goats an awful lot, but this was for Russ. In fact, I thought about having him write this paragraph, but I think I read somewhere that WordPress posts have a 900,000 word limit. This episode is worth listening to if only to hear how fast Russ is capable of speaking immediately after the song ends. Oh my god he talks so fast. I'm so excited. I'm so scared. UPDATED: I was completely wrong about the song. The horn work is great. Tony's crappy laptop speakers strike again. Sorry Mountain Goats ^R

We drink the 16th Anniversary IPA from Stone Brewing. It's made with lemon verbena. It is delicious. We discuss how Stone Brewing is kind of the Apple Computer of craft beer. We listen to the title track of the latest Propagandhi album, Failed States. Given that Propagandhi is louder than The Carpenters, Russ's reaction is somewhat predictable. The real entertainment, however, is in Russ's reaction to the old Propagandhi song we listen to as a reference to how their sound has evolved. Gold, Jerry! Gold! I inadvertently managed to do half an episode on Propagandhi without a single mention of John K. Samson or The Weakerthans, two artists of which I am very fond. It looks like ~20-minute-long episodes are the new normal. We want to produce episodes that have good topical integrity and maintain forward momentum throughout, and I think we are honoring that directive despite the steadily increasing episode length. There is something comfortable about 20 minutes. Please let us know if you disagree. I would also like to point out that we posted 5 episodes this month because we are a couple of badasses. We created a handy Episode Guide. We are available on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter.

Kansas City's own Boulevard Brewing recently arrived in the ATL, so Russ and I ran their double IPA up the flagpole to see if anyone (us) salutes (we did). We actually delved further into the nuances of the recipe than we do with most beers, which you will find either mildly insightful or mostly dumb. We were able to do this because Boulevard shares tons of detailed information about each of their beers on their website. In fact, I will go so far as to say that, for a brewery, Boulevard has one of the most user-friendly websites I've seen. Easy to navigate. Lots of information. No stupid designy-for-design's-sake Flash crap. Good job, Boulevard. We listen to a track off the latest Band of Horses record Mirage Rock. Russ finds the lyrics lacking. Tony has a hard time finding anything to say other than the music "breathes." We are boobs. Also, this: Buffalo Chicken Dip 4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, boiled and shredded (or 4 12.5-oz cans of chicken breast, shredded, or use the meat from one of those pre-cooked rotisserie chickens, shredded). Actually, it doesn't really matter. Just acquire about a quart of cooked chicken meat. God. 12 oz. bottle of hot sauce (Frank's or Louisiana, NOT Tobasco or Cholula or Tapatio, you spaz) Two 8 oz. packages of cream cheese, fatty 16 oz. bottle of Ranch dressing (America!) 2 cups (8 oz.) shredded Monterey Jack or cheddar cheese (or a combination of both) 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 2. Combine the chicken with the bottle of hot sauce and spread in a 9x13-inch baking dish (or any 3-quart baking dish). 3. In a saucepan, combine the cream cheese and the ranch dressing over low heat until the cream cheese is completely melted and smooth. Pour the mixture evenly over the chicken. Then sprinkle the cheese on top. 4. Bake uncovered for 30 to 40 minutes or until bubbly. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving. Serve with celery sticks (and/or other vegetables), tortilla chips or crackers.

Behold, our first official attempt at being "seasonal." It is October and we are drinking the Fall / Halloween themed Witch Hunt from Bridgeport. I suppose it is worth noting that this beer came out in early August, but WHATEVER. The important part is that we are well into our favorite time of year, and we use colorful euphemisms to describe how this makes us feel. Russ also makes an attempt to give me a silent hand signal, you know, because we are live and unscripted, and [wet] hilarity ensues. In the Russ Hates Everything department, it becomes apparent right from the start that Russ is still reeling from Episode 20. So I served up a song from the new NOFX album that I was pretty sure he would enjoy. By the end I had somehow volunteered to make him a mix tape. These are crazy times we are living in, people.