Hits From the Tap: Yes, Cypress Hill Made a Cannabis-Inspired Beer | October

Feb 13

Well, I made my high school fantasy come true: For an article in October, I interviewed B-Real, of high-falutin’ rap act Cypress Hill, to chat about his collaborative beer with SweetWater Brewing. Think: a Mexican-style lager that smells like a dank strain of cannabis. Wild. New. Worlds.

There’s never been a smokescreen hiding Cypress Hill’s message. Since blazing across pop culture in early ’90s, the Latino American hip-hop legends have been the high priests of smoking pot, speakers brimming with subtle, complex cannabis anthems such as “Hits From the Bong,” “Insane in the Brain” and “I Want to Get High.”

Curing all that cottonmouth requires plenty of cold beverages, a message I missed while plucking stems and seeds from my grade-Z dirt weed. “If you go back to our first Cypress Hill album and listen to ‘Hand on the Pump,’ the chorus is ‘Sawed off shotgun, hand on the pump / Left hand on a 40, puffing on a blunt,’” says Louis Freese, better known as B-Real, a founding MC of the hip-hip trio. “That meant drinking a 40-ounce beer while puffing on a blunt. People have been drinking beer and smoking weed together forever.”

Next month, B-Real will remix that kinship with 420 Strain: Insane OG Mexican-Style Craft Lager, a collaboration with SweetWater Brewing. “It smells like you’re drinking a bag of weed,” B-Real says of the seasonal lager.

That sound you heard is my 17-year-old brain going boom. Cypress. Hill. Beer. It’s a buck-wild new world, one I couldn’t have predicted in my most fully baked high school fantasy. But the last half-decade has brought recreational cannabis to California, Colorado, Illinois and more, states plunging headlong into the legal waters. Buying dubious dime bags from some dude behind the 7-Eleven’s dumpsters is dated news, replaced by dispensaries as sleek as Apple stores, budtenders serving strains tailored to every mood, dude.

B-Real is a prominent figure in this flowering cultural realignment, opening a chain of Dr. Greenthumb cannabis dispensaries stretching from Sacramento to San Francisco and a little city called Los Angeles. (B-Real nabbed his Dr. Greenthumb nickname from another Cypress Hill song.) He also hosts Viceland’s cannabis-themed cooking show Bong Appétit, sponsored by SweetWater.

“Music, beer and weed always go hand in hand, right?” says SweetWater cofounder Freddy Bensch. “We’ve been big fans of Cypress Hill going back to the old days.”

The brewery has been wink-wink about weed since its 1997 founding, releasing an extra pale ale called 420—slang for getting stoned—and hosting the annual 420 Fest, a music-and-beer celebration that’s featured Cypress Hill. As pot’s public-opinion polls trended upward, SweetWater put its love of cannabis front and center with its 420 Strain series that debuted in August 2018.

The beers contain a calibrated blend of hops, hemp flavors and terpenes, organic compounds that give plants such as pine trees and mint their distinct scents, to mimic specific cannabis varieties’ aromatic signatures. G13 IPA smells dankly resinous, while Mango Kush wheat beer packs a pungently fruity punch and Chocolope takes a chocolaty stout on a tropical ride. The 420 Strain line has been a scorching success, with Chicago-based market research firm IRI naming G13 the top new craft beer brand in 2019. “We want to continue to feed it,” Bensch says.

Maybe a certain Dr. Greenthumb could prescribe something tasty? B-Real had long admired SweetWater’s for splashing 420 across its labels. Craft breweries, he says, are much like cannabis cultivators in “coming up with all these different flavors that people enjoy…. It’s a great opportunity to bring our brands together and show the possibility of taking these flavor profiles and putting them in beer.”

B-Real selected his flagship Dr. Greenthumb strain, Insane OG, and a Mexican lager that SweetWater goosed to around 5.6 percent ABV, more akin to a medium-bodied Modelo Negra than any clear-bottled, lime-squeezed beach beer. “It provides a nice platform,” Bensch says. SweetWater brewed the lager with fruity Crystal and Jolly Rancher–like El Dorado hops, complemented by terpenes and hemp flavor that ape Insane OG’s grape fragrance.

“The fact that it smells like cannabis is fucking amazing,” says B-Real, who traveled to Atlanta for the December brew day. (The rapper will return in April to perform at this year’s 420 Fest.) Much like the liner notes to the Cypress Hill album Black Sunday, which contained 19 facts about cannabis, B-Real sees his Insane OG beer as an educational opportunity. “People that might not necessarily be cannabis user might taste the beer and want to learn about it,” he says. “Maybe that drives them to cannabis culture. I think that’s a win.”

SweetWater will further explore the intersection of beer and cannabis in its 420 Strain series, including February’s year-round Trainwreck hazy double IPA that’s redolent of ripe oranges rolled in vanilla beans and pine needles. “Cannabis strains run the gamut of flavor, aroma and occasions, and our beers will hopefully run the gamut too,” Bensch says. It’s a fertile opportunity for craft breweries to grow their audience by creating crossover hits from the bong.

“Who’s the drinker and what’s the occasion? I think it’s infinite,” Bensch says. “We’re creating a new consumer.”