Beer and music have always been great together. They practically go hand-in-hand, as seen by the explosion of the popularity of the Untapped Music and Beer Festival. Now, breweries are starting to jump on the same trend. Dogfish Head Brewery has an entire line up of music inspired beers, including: Miles Davis Bitches Brew Imperial Stout and most recently the Grateful Dead American Beauty IPA.

Local brewery, Martin House in Fort Worth, is also jumping in with this trend. As a commemoration of the 20th anniversary release of the Toadies’ (another local favorite) wildly popular Rubberneck album, they decided to help the band collaborate on a beer together.

The idea came to the Toadies when they heard about Real Ale’s collaboration with the band, The Sword, to create Iron Swan English Pale Ale. The band wanted to create a beer with a local brewery. After settling on Martin House, they came over to the brewery to try out the different styles and flavors that they typically brew with. They decided that they liked the Imperial Texan Red Ale, but at a 9% ABV, they decided that it was a little too much. After a few tweaks and bringing the ABV down to a more sessionable 5%, they came up with Rubberneck Red. There will be a special brewery tour on March 16th that will include a live performance from the band, but it’s too late now to get tickets, since they sold out 500 tickets in 3 minutes!

To get some more in-depth coverage, I decided to head over to Martin House and get a behind-the-scenes look at the brewery.

The day I went in was canning day for the 4 Grain Breakfast Beer, Day Break. The canning process is a tedious, yet necessary process for production breweries, like Martin House. Throughout the day we canned two pallets full of beer. That’s over 1500 cans of beer! I also got to help out and mill grain for the next batch of Rubberneck Red for release.

Also while there, I got a sneak peek at the next Martin House creation, Kafkaesque. As owner and brewer, Cody Martin, explained it, the beer is an Imperial Smoked, Black Rye Oaked, Raspberry IPA (a mouthful, I know!). The front-taste of the beer is mostly raspberry sourness, but finishes with IPA-bitterness, oak smokiness, and chocolate notes. The cacophony of flavors that is Kafkaesque, will be available at Untapped Festival next weekend in Fort Worth. Be sure to get there early, because it will go fast!

Also keep an eye out for Martin House’s other year round beers, Pretzel Stout and River House Saison, to appear in cans this Spring, along with their already canned beers, Imperial Texan and Day Break.

I would like to thank the entire Martin House gang for having me over to help out. Thanks Cody, Adam, Asa, Fabian, Jason, and David!

Make sure to check out Martin House and all of the other local and national breweries at the Untapped Beer and Music Festival in Fort Worth on March 8th at Panther Island Pavilion. Tickets are still available at www.untapped-festival.com/ftw/ including VIP tickets. Gates open at 4:00 pm for concert/beer ticket holders and 3:00 pm for VIP. Bands include The Joy Formidable, Allen Stone, Lucius, The Felice Brothers, among many others!

Beer list: www.untapped-festival.com/ftw/2014-beers/

Full band line up: www.untapped-festival.com/ftw/artists-2014/