The Mashup
When we shared our beer release calendar for 2022 over Christmas, the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed something a little vague and unfamiliar scheduled in for March.
‘The Mashup’, it said.
Well, we’re ready to reveal the significance behind those two words. Like any great story, it starts with a late night listening to old records - in this case, specifically The Grey Album, Danger Mouse’s cult favourite that combined The Beatles’ White Album with Jay-Z’s The Black Album.
While musing on the brilliance of this album and the curious nature of musical mashups in general (Collison Course, anyone?), we found ourselves hypothetically applying the same concept to beer and breweries.
How easy would it be to blend our greatest hits with their counterparts from Verdant or North? What beers would offer a stylistic fit and how easy would it be to merge characteristics of each constituent part while retaining the essence of what made them so popular in the first place?
Thinking about it more, we felt it would be really exciting to develop this into a more wide-ranging project involving some of our favourite UK breweries.
Not only do we hope it’ll be a lot of fun for the breweries involved but also for drinkers too, fostering a strong collaborative spirit and creating a sense of anticipation and enthusiasm.
Eight breweries are taking part in the first edition of The Mashup and, following a public vote, here are the pairings:
Cloudwater x Verdant
Beak x North
Boundary x Queer Brewing
Track x Overtone
Each pairing will work on a collaboration that combines two of their best-loved beers.
How they achieve that is up to them. It might be as simple as taking elements of the recipe from each constituent part and piecing them together, or they might look to bring through particular characteristics they were known for. Or they could go esoteric and look to create something that captures the spirit in which each of the originals was created.
As part of the collaboration - and continuing the musical theme - the two breweries in each pairing will also co-create a playlist to accompany the beer, giving a sense of the personalities and passions of the folks responsible for what’s in your glass.
All four beers will be launched on Friday April 29th at a series of events across the country and we’ll be releasing more information as the plans come together.
Can’t wait to start mashing things up!