True to Style
Brewery: 3 Sons Brewing Co. (Dania, FL) & Burial Beer Co. (Asheville, NC)
Artist: Audioslave
Beer: Kindred Beings (NE Hazy, 7.5% ABV)
Song: “Cochise”
3 Sons Brewing Co. and Burial Beer Co. bring life to “Kindred Beings”, a New England Hazy IPA that checks all the boxes.
Appearance: Cloudy, like a New England spring, with a modest foam crown that slowly dissolves into a thin crown around the glass.
Aroma: Wafts of sweet citrus and pineapple come off the top of the beer to rope you in for a sip.
Taste: A complex blend of that citrus and pineapple I mentioned, with a hint of white wine grape (Grape? Yeah. I’ll get to that).
Feel: It’s smooth, baby. Really smooth and juicy, with mild carbonation that dances across your tongue.
Finish: This beer rides along the edge of bitter, but you never get stung by a hoppy finish.
This is probably attributed to 3 Sons’ secret ingredient: Phantasm — aka freeze-dried New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc grape skins. The brewers implement this ingredient the same way they use hops, adding them later in the boil. I didn’t notice white wine in the aroma, but a friend claimed they caught a whiff before they guzzled this brew.
“Kindred Beings” is a true to style NE Hazy, so it was only fitting that I pair this brewski with a band that is true to style.
Rock supergroups tend to be short-lived, combustible projects. It’s been said that rockstars can have huge egos, so let’s assume that the ego-tripping in a supergroup is Olympian. They don’t last a long time because they collapse under the weight of all the narcissism.
Audioslave, an early-00s rock supergroup composed of everyone from Rage Against the Machine not named Zach De La Rocha and everyone from Soundgarden named Chris Cornell, had a seven-year run, an eternity for supergroups, that included a couple platinum albums and Grammy nominations. Whether you found their brand of rock uninspired or electrifying, the combination of instrumentalist talents and a vocal phenomenon created a powerful sound for Audioslave. What this band did best was generate pure rock that could blow the roof off an arena.
A kick ass beer deserves a kick ass song, and I rocked “Cochise” at full tilt while I enjoyed “Kindred Beings”. The brew elevated my listening experience, soaking up the thumping intro of Brad Wilk’s drums. Tom Morello’s guitar builds from a fuzzy growl to a fully flexed roar before the entire tracks explodes with what the less refined among us would describe as “noise”. Nah. This is rock ‘n roll magic.
When two entities collide and take a moment to dance a few steps together in this grand ballet we call life, they might find they share supernatural synergy — an instinct that guides their movement with perfect synchronicity. “Cochise”, Audioslave’s first single, is one of the band’s moments of synchronicity. The irony might be that one interpretation of the song is of an alcoholic telling themselves that they need to get sober, struggling to do it, pleading in the mirror to, “go on and save yourself, and take it out on me.”
However, the riff and the rhythm section bring back a 70s hard rock vibe, circa Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. There’s something about that kind of rock and roll that makes beer taste better, which is where I stand with “Cochise” and the 3 Sons/Burial collaboration, “Kindred Beings”. This is a moment of perfect synchronicity, when these two entities engage in a brief dance, and the shuffle of their non-existent feet — the way the Hazy IPA washed over my tongue while the band rocked TFO — elevated the neutral state of my life to a higher plane of existence.
“Cochise”: 4/5
“Kindred Beings”: 4/5
