Music is Everything to Us

Welcome back to March’s edition of BlogDBB! I am so excited to walk you through just how important music is to us here at Divine Barrel Brewing! It’s not just an important facet of our overall branding at this little brewery here in Charlotte. For many of us, music is our lives! We live and breathe it all day, every day. It’s engrained in everything, from our beer, to the art and décor in our space itself. We love and miss the sounds of live music filling our taproom walls, so playlists have become even more important to us! Follow along our story to see how the power of music shapes this little NoDa brewery!

Google our Beer Names

If you pay close enough attention to our beers and brewery, there are musical references and Easter eggs littered throughout. Go ahead, think about almost any of our beer names. Now go ahead and Google those names. There’s a better than really good chance you’ll come to find out the name came from a band and/or song! I would estimate that close to 75% of the beer names we use are some sort of obscure musical lyric, album, or other reference. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but almost all of our West Coast IPAs are named after Frank Zappa! Not only that, but our love for music even extends to the equipment we use to brew the beer. We named our four original fermenters after the band members of Phish; Leo, Ernest, Henrietta & Cactus. Naturally, they’re named in the order the band members stand on stage too. That’s dedication right there!

Musical Themes Everywhere

The music never stops at us just naming beer and brewing equipment. The rest of our brewery is steeped in musical themes as well. Step into our taproom you’re immediately greeted by our “Wall of Sound,” which contains concert posters from shows we’ve all been to and mean so much to us. There is even a small section on the wall of sound where we allow our friend, Toby, to sell some of the cooler concert posters and musical artwork he wants! Even the décor has subtle nods to music! Our blue couch pillows with red circles are nods to Phish. We’re about to have an awesome mural painted in our taproom by the incredible Darion Fleming, which will even be inspired by the style of the Animals album art by Pink Floyd. We find it so much fun to be able to sneak in all of these references, and it’s even more fun when someone figures out what we’re doing!

We Miss Live Music

Live music is what a lot of us live for here at Divine Barrel! We love going to see shows, whether it’s here at the brewery, a show at the Neighborhood Theatre or any of the other amazing Charlotte venues, or traveling just to catch a show! We love being able to work in a fun collab too if we’re traveling for concerts! Fun fact, our very first collab beer we ever did was with our dear friends at Eurisko Beer Company in Asheville. We actually scheduled that collab around when we wanted to go check out an up-and-coming funk group at the time, called Khruangbin, who has since blown up and I see their music used in Super Bowl commercials now. To this day, that is still one of our fondest memories since opening up Divine Barrel! It is also killing us on the inside to not be able to support all the amazing live music here at the brewery right now due to the pandemic. We can’t wait to host that first ripper of a show whenever this pandemic is behind us! Until then, it has forced us to hone in on our playlist game!

Spotify Playlists Are Life

With no live music to fill our taproom right now we’ve been digging deep into the libraries. We’ve filled out some fun playlists on Spotify! One of my favorite things about working at Divine Barrel Brewing is much like our eclectic taplists, our brewery family has an equally diverse taste in music. I love that one day I’ll walk in here and get to listen to Mos Def and then the next day I’ll get to listen to Coheed & Cambria. You never know what you’re going to get when you walk through our doors… unless Gavin is in control. If you hear The Allman Brothers Band playing then you know who’s one the 1s and 2s that day! In the spirit of today’s blog post, we decided to curate a special Spotify playlist for you to check out. I asked each of our staff member’s to submit at least one song of their choosing. It could be their favorite song ever, a tune from their favorite band, or something they’ve had on repeat recently. This playlist reflects the diverse taste in music our Fam DBB shares, and I hope you’ll give it a spin. You can also follow our page to keep up-to-date with any and all music we add!

Thanks for Reading!

I hope this love letter to music has given you a closer look at how much this artform influences everything we do. We love to nonchalantly slip music references into our beer and taproom. Much like our artist, Dave Kaminsky, who hides Easter Eggs throughout our beer labels, we also hide musical Easter Eggs throughout our brand. If you pay close enough attention, you can follow along our journey like you’re on our team! Thanks so much for reading this month’s edition, and hope you’ll be back for April’s edition!