How the Saucy Collective Artist Series is Chilling Out with Music and Beer

Eric Anderson is a brewer, but it is his experience as a musician that inspired him to create Saucy Brew Works, an Artist Collective series of beers. For these beers, Saucy collaborates with a local artist to create a unique beer that fits the artist’s tastes. The first collaboration was with local pop artist Chayla Hope and named Damn, Feelings after Hope’s album. The beer launched on October 29, 2022 and according to Anderson will probably last through mid-December. We spoke with Anderson to learn more about the collaboration

How did the Saucy Artist Collective series come about? 

I had the concept for it for a couple years. I just said, “I want to start working with a whole bunch of artists and use our brand power to get them seen and heard.” That was the idea behind the whole thing. We have a lot of different verticals within Saucy. We have a coffee arm. We have a cannabis arm. Everyone has their own input from the partners’ point of view. Mine was the music. I’ve been a musician my whole life. I had to choose between beer and music at some point in my career. I obviously chose beer, but this allows me to get back into music. We get together with the artists, we chat about who they are. I listen to their catalog, and we bring out something cool that they’re into. Our graphics team puts their spin on it, so we really get a three-way artist collaboration. 

Your first in the series was Damn, Feelings with Chayla Hope. How did you decide what kind of beer that should be? 

Chayla on the line  photo credit Marissa Lee

I met Teddy (Eisenberg, Chayla’s manager) and Chayla, and it was an instant connection. I asked her, “Hey, what kind of beers do you usually drink? What flavors do you like irrespective of style?” She mentioned she likes wheat beers and fruity beers, and some pretty powerful flavors. I came up with a couple ideas to make the beer kind of pink because I knew her album cover is pink. I tried to make it look and taste the part. The name is the title of the album. I gave her two or three ideas and the first one I listed, she said, “That’s the one.” It’s a super-fruited pink, delicious beer. 

Without giving any recipe secrets away, what goes into Damn, Feelings? 

Her beer is a hazy IPA. It’s pilsner malt, wheat, a lot of oats. We used two hops. Mosaic has this kind of dark berry, bright citrus note. El Dorado has honeydew and citrus character as well. We added a ton of fruit: apricot, blood orange, and guava. I wanted to get blood orange in there just for the ephemeral name of blood orange for Damn, Feelings. It turned the beer pink. It was perfect. It was just what I was looking for. 

What is it about the yeast in Damn, Feelings that makes it so fun to work with? 

Damn, Feelings close up  photo credit Marissa Lee

Before I was a brewer, I got a degree in microbiology. Yeast has always been a focus of my brewing generally balanced beers. I also tend to brew not “to style”. If you enter a competition, there are 75 or so different styles of beer, which is cool if you can brew those to the book and fit in those guidelines. As an artist myself, I tend to play with the flavors. If a beer tastes good, it’s a good beer. I don’t care what style it is. It creates beers that don’t exist. For Chayla’s beer, there’s a company in Chicago called Omega Yeast. They’re one of the only companies that’s done this, but they’ve been branding their yeasts with cartoon graphics and cool names. They had just come out with a new yeast a month before we started this collaboration. It’s called Star Party. It was a modified yeast that’s meant to throw off Thiols. Thiols are reminiscent of sauvignon blanc, white grape. It really worked well in a tropical, fruity beer like that. It was the first time we’d ever worked with that yeast and it turned out perfect. 

Aside from the album release party, how are the Artist Collective beers marketed? Where are they sold? 

We have a robust beer calendar. We have 22 different beers that come out to distribution per year. When we do these one-offs, we only do a small run. We do a single batch that is just more than 600 gallons. After we can 40 cases of it, there’s just not that much left. It goes to all of our five locations. One of the big parts of this series is the pull we have with our social media following. We have right around 50,000 followers between the different channels that we’ve grown organically. We refuse to pay for that. The artist gets showcased there for the release. It’s in our pubs. It’s on our social platforms, and it’s in local venues. 

What’s next for the Artist Collective project? 

The next artist in the series is The Rosies, which is Lake Erie surf punk. I met them and asked what they were into. They said cheap beer and tequila. They call their fan group The Rose Garden. I thought I’m going to make this pink. I asked them what they thought about a tequila cocktail-themed beer, like a Paloma. It’s grapefruit, lemon, lime, those kinds of things It really does taste like a Paloma.