How Six String Brewing matched its killer craft beers to music genres from metal to surf rock

Six String Brewing’s Chris Benson reveals how he turned his two passions – music and beer – into an expanding business.

From Johnny Cash to George Thorogood and ZZ Top to Garth Brooks, artists have been writing songs about beer for decades.

And there’s something about the live music experience that is exponentially enhanced by sipping on your favourite brew while rocking out to tunes you love.

Such is the connection between beer and music that it’s little wonder that craft breweries have been forging strong connections with music festivals, gigs and artists in recent years.

Local outfit Stone and Wood will be front and centre at next week’s Byron Bay Bluesfest (as well as throwing their own annual Festival of the Stone) and Sydney institution Young Henry’s Best Served Loud live series continues to kick arse with its most recent event headlined by award-winning Indigenous act King Stingray.

Tumut River Brewing Co., in regional NSW, paid homage to one of the nation’s best loved and hardest working bands with its delicious You Am IPA, which is “designed to give you maximum refreshment while you’re enjoying maximum rock and roll” and features dynamic front man Tim Rogers on the can.

Even the artists themselves are getting in on the act, with ARIA-winning dance duo Peking Duk last year teaming up with First Nations owned company Sobah to release a limited edition, non-alcoholic lager, Fake Magic, named after one of their hits.

Chris and Sharon Benson from Six String Brewery.

But there’s one brewery dialling the combination up to 11 – Six String Brewing Company on the Central Coast New South Wales takes its name from founder Chris Benson’s love of the six-string bass and its output reflects his eclectic musical tastes.

Six String, one of the first craft breweries in the region, celebrated its 10th birthday with a bash earlier this month. After a rocky start trying to win over the locals “one schooner at a time”, the company has gone from strength to strength, partly thanks to partnerships with the Scene and Heard and This That festivals in Newcastle, and also their eclectic range of beers, including a Tropical Pale Ale that took a gold medal at last year’s Independent Beer Awards.

As the brewery looks to expand to new location later this year that will let them put live bands front and centre, Benson says the common denominator between music and making beer is creativity.

“There’s a kind of artistic connection that beer and music have and there’s a creative outlet in the beer side of it which you have with music as well,” he says.

“A lot of our staff are musicians funnily enough – we have drummers, other bass players, guitarist, singers – we have them all.”

Not only are the colours of the cans in the Six String core range inspired by classic guitars, the beers themselves are themed to different musical genres.

“We try to get some sort of musical reference in our beers, especially our seasonal beers,” says marketing manager Sharon Benson. “The Dark Red IPA is our heavy metal, loud and in-your-face beer, whereas our Tropical Pale Ale is an easy-drinking, laid-back, surf-rock kind of beer. They all have some sort of musical link just as a bit of fun really.

Aussie rockers You Am I have a craft beer named in their honour. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

“We have just added a stout to our core range, which is just available over winter and people have really been enjoying that. It’s only a 4.4 per cent beer so it’s not one of those massive imperial stouts that craft brewers often like to make. We went with the emo for that – heavy metal was already taken – but we had to go with the black theme.”

Chris had been working in IT in Sydney for a decade, rocking out and brewing beer on the side before starting Six String. But eventually the lure of family, a sea change and the possibility of combining his two passions proved too hard to resist, prompting the move up the coast with wife Sharon.

“I was playing in bands previously and I wasn’t really getting famous that way,” he says with a laugh. “Basically it was just a love of beer really. I was home-brewing in the early days and entering a few competitions and doing quite well in them so I thought I must be making a drinkable product so why not take it to the masses?”

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Originally published as How Six String Brewing matched its killer craft beers to music genres from metal to surf rock