OnTap Magazine

28 | Spring 2025 | ontapmag.co.za – sweet, sour, salty, bitter – and different musical styles. “Side Two” applies this learning. Across 45 pairings, including pop, rock, punk, post-rock, ambient, classical, country, folk, hip-hop, brass, grime, trance and opera. Tasting Notes shows that the flavours of la- ger, pale ale, stout, IPA, mild, geuze, porter, stout and Trappist ales can be enhanced or even altered by the music you hear when drinking them. For each one, there’s a short es- say on why the beer is great, why the song matters, and why they go together. There’s a full playlist on Spotify so you can grab a beer and experiment for yourself. There are different ways to make these pairings work. The easiest is just by situ- ation and context – if you’ve ever made a playlist for the gym, and a different one for, say, background dinner music or music to work to, then you’re already playing with how different music suits and even enhanc- es different occasions. Beer does some- thing similar – you choose a different pint on a hot summer’s day than you would on a cold, rainy evening, not just because they taste different, but also because they help to create the right mood. There’s pairing by intuition too. Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” goes with a wheat beer such as Hoegaarden simply because they feel right together. I can only make ed- ucated guesses as to why. Then there’s pairing by “priming words.” In everyday conversations, we use the same words to describe different sensory experi- ences. We even use words that are strictly associated with one sense in the context of another sense. We might describe music as smooth or rough – words that relate to tex- ture – or we might describe a visual pattern as “loud” even though it’s not making any noise. If I say something is dark and heavy, or light and spritzy, I could be talking about the properties of a beer or a song. If you match that beer and that song, the beer is going to taste better. Then things get even more interesting. Think about musical pitch. Is the flavour of lemon high-pitched or low-pitched? What about dark chocolate? The ques- tion doesn’t seem to make any sense. And yet, if you said citrus was high-pitched and chocolate low, then you said the same as 99 per cent of people to whom I’ve asked that question. Tempo: is lemon fast or slow? We all recognise these relationships when they’re pointed out, even if we’ve never thought of thembefore. Low-pitchedmusic brings out the chocolate and coffee notes in a stout, while high-pitched music accen- tuates the citrusy notes in a hoppy pale ale. BUT DIFFERENT MUSIC CHANGING THE FLAVOUR OF BEER? HOW DOES THAT WORK? Well… we don’t know. But it does. Grab yourself a well-made IPA – a punchy beer, which has some sweet, fruity flavours from the hops, and an assertive bitterness at the end. Drink the beer listening to “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes, and then drink it again with Billie Eilish’s theme tune to the last Bond film, “No Time To Die.” One of these tunes will make the beer taste sweeter. The other will make it taste more bitter. Which way round? Give it a go, and you tell me. Or grab a sour beer. Taste it, making a note of how the sourness lands. Is it not sour enough, too sour or just right? Now put on some modern jazz, nineties rave or 2010s grime. How is that sourness level now? Has it changed? Beer and music are two of life’s great- est pleasures. They’re both as old as civil- isation. They both accompany our most joyous and most memorable moments, from weddings to funerals. We use both to help create a sense of identity, as in- dividuals, as groups and even as coun- tries. A great rock gig without a beer is as incomplete as a beer drunk in silence. Of course they belong together – they al- ways have. But now we know that they do more than that. They blend, merge, and make life feel better together. https://www.petebrown.net/ SCAN FOR SPOTIFY PLAYLIST