This summer Def Leppard are teaming up with Journey for massive co-headlining tour that kicks off on May 21st and runs through the summer. That really isn’t beer news and doesn’t have a place here, but the rest of the story is noteworthy. The venerable rockers also teamed up with Seattle’s Elysian Brewing Company to create Def Leppard Pale. The beer is slated for a May 23rd release and will be available at most stops on the Def Leppard tour.
Joe Elliott, Def Leppard’s lead singer and front-man, told Billboard Magazine, “It tastes great – that’s the most important thing I can tell you. I would pass on doing an interview about this if I didn’t like it. That to me is the most important thing.”
Elliott says that he could see it becoming “the new normal to have it in the fridge,” adding that, “We’re not going to drink it just because we put our name on it. I don’t walk around wearing our fucking t-shirt.”
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
Elysian Brewing’s CEO and co-founder Joe Bisacca says that the company jumped at the chance to work with Def Leppard once it presented itself. “For our brand, our ethos is guitar, bass and drums. It’s not ballad-y, it’s not a quiet love song — it’s hardcore rock.”
Reportedly, the beer was developed using numerous emails, Skype calls and some FedEx-ed sample shipments. “It’s like a song – you can’t rush it,” Elliott said.
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
“We had the idea here that the beer should celebrate something of the band and something of us,” Bisacca says. “The best of British beer is the malt body and that beautiful malt balance. And the best thing about American beer is the citrus, piney hops. So we’ve taken those two aspects, put them together and come up with a beer you can actually drink a few of — 6% ABV you can drink all night long.”
“They’re great, they’re confident, they seem very rock n’ roll and we like that,” Elliott says of working with Elysian. “We like the people we’re working with, we like the beverage, and that’s a great way to start.”
“There’s no cut off time on this,” Elliott says. “If it takes off and people like it, it can be around. Iron Maiden has a beer named Trooper and they’ve done really well with theirs. We have to see if we can match that. It’s been around five years or so by now, so there’s a long way to go to keep up with them and all these other people [with branded alcohol such as] Jimmy Buffett. We don’t know what kind of legs it’s going to have — come back to me in a couple years on that one, I’m not gazing into a crystal ball right now.”
To learn more about all of this, see the story that Billboard published.
