Lots of fabulous ideas, partnerships and collaborations stem from people gathering and indulging in frosty pints of beer.
For a few years, Dirty Heads’ drummer Matt Ochoa and percussionist Jon Olazabal have been bellying up to the bar at Four Sons Brewing in their hometown of Huntington Beach. As the pair got chatting at the brewery with the Four Sons – Deven, Dustin, Derek and Drew Dufresne – they decided to create their very own Dirty Heads beer. The final product is Vacation, a pineapple session ale named after the band’s recent single. Four Sons Brewing will host a Vacation launch party in Huntington Beach at 5 p.m. on Friday, July 27 and Dirty Heads fans can check the band’s official Facebook and Twitter pages for the exclusive RSVP invite.
“We’ve actually been fans of their beer for years,” Olazabal said during a recent interview. “We love that it’s a family-run brewery and they run their business the way we feel we run our band and it was just this perfect kind of natural fit. It turned out they were fans of our band, too, so the collaboration just kind of happened over a few beers in their tasting room.”
Ochoa and Olazabal are the craft beer connoisseurs of the reggae, rock and hip-hop group and when they’re out touring across the country, they often put in the request for venues to provide them with a couple six-packs of local craft beer for their dressing room.
“We always try to find breweries that we haven’t been to and trying to taste beers we’ve never tasted before,” Ochoa said.
The guys didn’t just put their name and label on this can and call it a day either. They were a part of the entire brewing process from start to finish, including canning the beer, which took place at the brewery just last week.
It all began a couple of months ago with selecting a style of beer. Originally it was going to be a lager, Four Sons’ Deven Dufresne said in a recent interview, however they switched it up to a session ale so they’d be able to add some different flavors to create “the perfect beach beer” to match the Dirty Heads’ laid back, surf, sun and Southern California vibe. Four Sons gave the guys a list of 25 different fruits to choose from and they came in to taste the session ales infused with flavors such as watermelon, mango, strawberry, blackberry and apricot.
“The mango was actually pretty good, but the apricot wasn’t working for us,” Olazabal noted. “I mean, it looked good on paper, it just didn’t pan out well. I can’t remember all of the flavors we did, but when the pineapple hit, it kind of jumped out at us and we kept coming back to it. It’s the perfect summertime fruit for that.”
Unbeknownst to the Dirty Heads, the Four Sons had already done their own taste test and were secretly hoping the guys would pick the pineapple.
“Yeah, we tried them all ahead of time and we liked the pineapple the best but didn’t want to say anything to try to influence them,” Dufresne said. “We wanted them to be the deciding factor and they picked the same one we did, so it worked out pretty well.”
After the style and flavor was selected, Dirty Heads’ bassist Dave Foral designed the artwork for the can, which includes the band’s octopus logo. It’s definitely something Ochoa and Olazabal agree is the ultimate band trophy and keepsake that will look good displayed on a shelf or in their refrigerators.
“We’ve always been beer guys and now we have our own and we put a good amount of work into it so there’s a lot of pride involved in it,” Olazabal said. “We would never just slap our name on something and release whatever random thing they had. We were there for the whole process so it’s beyond cool to have this can and this cool art, but it’s also what’s inside the can that we’re very proud of.”
Though one might expect a band like the Dirty Heads go to for something strong and hoppy, Ochoa said the goal was to make the beer light and drinkable and it comes in at 5 percent alcohol by volume. Olazabal said his taste has changed throughout the years, but he likes a good Mexican lager or a heavier IPA with a nice meal. Ochoa likes his IPAs a bit lighter and isn’t opposed to a cold and refreshing Coors Light, however he likes the way Vacation turned out since it’s just a hint of pineapple and not “a super fruity beer that just blasts you in the face.
“We wanted it to reflect us and the music so we were thinking something light, crisp, refreshing, like summertime,” he said. “It had to be something you could grab and go to the beach and drink a couple cans or something you could grab a six-pack of and share with your buddies.”
This probably won’t be the only beer collaboration between Dirty Heads and Four Sons since even the Dufresnes’ parents, Duke (aka Dad) and Daune (aka Mom), are now big Dirty Heads fans.
“The best part about working with these guys is that we’re always interested in the music side of things so I ask Matt and Jon how they come up with certain things because that’s interesting to me, but the fact that they’re just as interested in what we’re doing here, makes us feel pretty good, too,” Deven Dufresne said.
Dirty Heads Vacation Pineapple Session Ale Release
When: 5 p.m. Friday, July 27
Where: Four Sons Brewing, 18421 Gothard Street, Suite 100, Huntington Beach
Tickets: Must RSVP via Dirty Heads official Facebook or Twitter pages. 21-and-over only.