The spirit of collaboration is alive and well in the world of craft beer. Typically these collaborations are between like-minded breweries, where recipes are developed to showcase originality or shared passions. Take, for example, Sierra Nevada’s ongoing Beer Camp series where the craft stalwart teams up with the country’s most innovative upstart breweries. This year’s Beer Camp release spawned several solid brews, including the delicious East Meets West IPA with Tree House Brewing.
Another craft beer pioneer that’s not afraid to share its label space is Dogfish Head. They’ve teamed with many breweries in the past, including Stone and Victory for the Saison du Buff ale. Dogfish Head also regularly ventures out beyond the beer world to collaborate with musicians. In the past few years they’ve made beers in conjunction with, or in celebration of, acts like Miles Davis, Pearl Jam, and The Grateful Dead. This April will see the release of Dragons & YumYums, Dogfish Head’s latest musical beer with alternative rock icons, The Flaming Lips.
Dragons & YumYums is a 6.5 percent ABV, tropical, bitter ale brewed with dragonfruit, yumberry, passionfruit, pear juice, and black carrot juice. This combination of nontraditional ingredients is on-brand with The Flaming Lips’ irreverent recordings and live shows. Their audience never really knows what is coming next, but the track record implies that it will be weird and wonderful.
Like Dogfish Head, The Flaming Lips are not strangers to collaboration. Previous albums have seen the band pair with artists like Chris Martin, Erykah Badu, Kesha, and Miley Cyrus. This isn’t The Flaming Lips’ first trip to package store shelves either, as they recently joined forces with FEW Spirits for a rye whiskey called Brainville.
In 2018, Dogfish Head has several other new beers on deck, including a tart dry farmhouse ale called Mixed Media and Fruit-Full Fort, a Belgian-style ale fermented with four different berry juices. The Flaming Lips spent much of 2017 on tour promoting their latest album Buy Now . They have only announced one 2018 show so far, at Florida’s Okeechobee Music & Arts Festival in March.
