Today we’re dropping the first beer we’ve made with an honest-to-Datsun Belgian yeast strain that we’ve made in several years. And we couldn’t be more thrilled about it.

Belgian style beers - with their devil-to-the-winds attitudes toward Germany’s rheinetsgebot laws and wily sense of creativity and curiosity, combined with a pedigree of some of the most complex and beautiful yeast strains on this planet - have always been a prime inspiration for us here at IBW.

Belgium is the birthplace of Surrealism and the battle ground for Europe’s unending cultural squabbles over these past many centuries, so, it’s no wonder that those wonderful people have developed a very sane and healthy approach to the sensual delights of food and drink and living along the way.

It’s with no irony or exaggeration when I say that the reason I started brewing was out of homage and pursuit of cracking the code on Orval and Danny Prignon’s ‘Fantome’ label. So, now that we’ve got our little beer hovel, IBW Lodge #1, it’s one of my great pleasures to start playing with these invisible friends once again. I’m sure you’ll dig the results.

When Chicago’s Drag City Records approached us to collaborate on a beer for Ben Chasny’s latest release, “Intimate Landscape”, we wanted to make something complex & subtle, big, but yielding; like Ben’s music.

Special B’s caramel pitch along with that relentless kaleidoscope of fruit and spice from the Rochefort yeast seemed the perfect answer. Both of these ingredients have large personalities, though, when enjoyed with food, they somehow mute, yield and change in response to their sensory collaborators. This is what Ben always seemed to be doing when communicating his ideas in sound: reflecting the world around him with a vision and curiosity that shined through the listening experience, inhabiting his audience in landscapes - sometimes terrifying, often sublime. Ben paints gothic, stained-glass cathedrals with sound. And burns them with concave glass for kicks.

You can buy 4-packs of Intimate Landscape at IBW Lodge #1 for $9 starting today, Monday October 18th. You’ll also be able to get Intimate Landscape at any decent bottle shop in and around Chicago starting this Wednesday.

And, starting tomorrow, you can buy Ben’s LP, “Intimate Landscape” + a 4-pack of Intimate Landscape at IBW Lodge #1 for the low, low, low American price of $21 (while supplies last, et al.). You will also receive a free high-five in honor of your impeccable taste with every purchase.