“You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline,” Frank Zappa once said. “It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” Interesting words indeed, from a devoted teetotaler.
But now Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma, California, has given the abstemious FZ a posthumous beer of his own — whether he likes it or not. Their new American IPA is a tribute to the Mothers of Invention’s debut record, Freak Out! , one of the first musical salvos of the ’60s culture wars, recorded exactly 40 years ago.
That album opens with a raucous thumbing of the nose at button-down, brown-shoes-wearing America, called “Hungry Freaks, Daddy.” This beer is meant for the thirsty ones.
In vaguely psychedelic fashion, it pours a vibrant, translucent orange, capped with a substantial head that soon dissipates into fine, brumous foam. Its aroma is intensely citrusy, with pleasing grass/resin undertones. And despite its potent kick (7.3 percent), it tastes robust and well-balanced, with a keen sweetness outweighed just a little by the assertive, astringent hop bite.
Zappa may not have been a drinker, but he knew bite. And anyone who could record an album with the lyrics, “I sit and laugh at fools in love/ there ain’t no such thing as love” sitting a few tracks away from the triplet “wowie zowie, your love’s a treat/ wowie zowie, you can’t be beat/ wowie zowie, baby you’re so neat” knew well that having bite and fun are not mutually exclusive.
Available for $4.99 for a 22-ounce bottle at Bauer Wine & Spirits, 330 Newbury Street, Boston | 617.262.0363.
