Here at Great Beer Now, we like to celebrate. We like to tip back a bottle or can of our favorite craft beer and drink to the things we know and love. It could be family, our favorite place of travel, or even someone whom we admire. Whatever the occasion, a glass of fine brew make the perfect toast to someone or something we know and love.
Just yesterday, Great Beer Now learned that a certain band we know and have loved for more than two decades is receiving a great honor of its own, and from one of the nation’s best- known and most revered brewing operations no less. Dogfish Head Brewery, the critically acclaimed Delaware brewery founded by Sam Calagione, is honoring indie rockers Guided by Voices with a new beer. The lager beer is known as BEER Thousand and it celebrates the 20th anniversary of Guided by Voices critically acclaimed album, Bee Thousand. This imperial lager contains ten different malts, ten different hop varieties, and ten percent alcohol by volume. Multiply 10 by 10 by 10 and you have BEER Thousand.
Click here to listen to Bee Thousand on You Tube.
As anyone knows who has been to a Guided by Voices show (and I have been to many of them), beer is a perennial part of each production. Guided by Voices leader Robert Pollard is no stranger to swigging a few brewskis and he has consumed his share of beer at concerts over the years. Most of Pollard’s imbibing has been of the Miller Lite variety and this undoubtedly influenced Dogfish Head to produce a lager rather than ale for its tribute.
BEER Thousand celebrates the indie spirit that has served Guided by Voices so well over the past twenty- plus years. Pollard and his bandmates never wanted to be known as a pop band or a bunch of musicians following trends or looking to make music that would be the most popular. Guided by Voices made music their way and the results has been some remarkable albums that often rank among the best indie rock albums in history. Bee Thousand is arguably the bands best work and it’s still highly influential two decades after its release.
“I can’t believe it’s been 20 years, but I’ll drink to that”, said Robert Pollard in a recent interview about Bee Thousand.
BEER Thousand has already been released in small batches. It was served at the Guided by Voices show in Madison Wisconsin on June 19, 2014 and there will be some available at the Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware while the small supply lasts. In early fall, 2014, it will be released nationwide.
Whether an imperial lager like BEER Thousand will prove itself agreeable to the macrobrew- conditioned palates of Pollard and fellow band mates remains to be seen, but it’s extremely cool that Dogfish Head would choose to honor Guided by Voices and its incredible album Bee Thousand in this manner. It’s the perfect act of celebration for a band that recorded the music they wanted to record from a brewery that brews the beer it wants to brew, regardless of trends.
Look for BEER Thousand at stores near you this fall, 2014 and celebrate twenty years of Bee Thousand, one of Guided by Voices very best.
Leave a Reply