Beer for art's sake
LAUNCHING 1/1/2020. FAB--our cans are venues of free expression dedicated to connecting artists with audiences to make powerful statements. Founded by Ben Holmes and a team of artists and activists. Our mission is to brew world class beers which build a better world through art. Read on...
The BABY DICTATORS PROJECT is our first can series (and we have more on the way). It responds to the destruction of artwork in good humor with a statement of resilience!
We’re creating cans which invent good hearted satirical balloons, hand-designed by artists to be flown to challenge dictators around the world. Balloons will first be fabricated and flown at activist events and political rallies in the USA election year 2020. The first two balloons are BALLOON FACTORY (Adam O'Day) and SQUID PRO QUO (Andy Jacob). Using can sales to fund art and fabrication, we will create enough balloons to replace many times over the “Baby Trump” protest artwork which was destroyed at an LSU Football Game.
As citizens of an international community stunned by the rise of totalitarian dictatorships around the world, it was important for us as brewers and activists to create a company which would stand up for ideals that we believed in as citizens. One moment of transformation occurred for us on a morning in October 2019 when a piece of protest artwork was destroyed at a rally in Alabamba, USA. The BABY DICTATORS PROJECT is our first can series and it was built around this moment to respond to destruction of artwork with resilience, satirizing current- and aspiring dictators by building large balloons to explore their positive futures in alternative realties where they had happier childhoods.
The purpose of this project is to reinforce artistic resiliency and free protest on a national scale. Its mascot is MEDUSA BALLOON, created by Adam O’Day.
Ben and Todd created the recipes for our first two beers. BALLOON FACTORY is a West Coast-style IPA and SQUID PRO QUO is a Double IPA. Both beers are brimming with hops from the American Northwest.
Each of these first recipes employs mash hopping, a technique which deeply integrates hop flavors (see below). These beers are also dry hopped at two points–once, during the height of fermentation activity to promote the integration of resinous hop terpenes into the flavor of the beer, and secondly, at the tail end of fermentation–immediately following which addition, the beer is capped to capture the hop aromas. This naturally carbonates the beer, producing tiny, champagne-like bubbles from fermentation of trace amounts of sugars present in the hop flowers.
[+] Learn about Mash Hopping Both BALLOON FACTORY and SQUID PRO QUO are mash hopped beers. Mash hopping involves the addition of hops (in this case, Citra) at the very beginning of beer brewing. These hops are added at relatively low temperatures, allowing extraction into the beer of many sought after aroma compounds in addition to some plant sugars which are found in the hop flowers. Mash hop plant matter is discarded before the beer is boiled and our early experiments point to this reducing the extraction of harsh bitterness which can result from hop additions during the boiling of wort.
“This baby Trump balloon is a very orange Georgia peach. The poor guy didn’t seem happy in the city. He is freed from a menacing urban landscape and drifts to a farm I painted in New Hampshire. The word farm has multiple meanings: retiring in peace... or going to jail.” --ADAM O’DAY, Balloon Factory, MA @ADAM_ODAY
...Learn more about Balloon Factory and fund Baby Dictator balloons with the original artwork, T-shirts and stickers, HERE!
"I imagined him floating over a psychedelic sunset, riding tubes in pure bliss. 5 alternate reality surfer Trumps guide the strings harmoniously. Like if he grew up surfing with his dad, going to the beach each weekend. --ANDREW JACOBS, Wellfleet Mass. @SOULKONTROLLER
...Learn more about Squid Pro Quo and fund Baby Dictator balloons with museum quality prints, hoodies and stickers, HERE!
MEDUSA BALLOON is the mascot for this series. It was imagined by Adam O’Day who is also an artist of BALLOON FACTORY, the first baby dictator. We are not sure how to fabricate MEDUSA BALLOON, as the shape is outrageously complicated. A perfect MEDUSA BALLOON, would probably work like this guy: