In an age where celebrities slap their names and likenesses onto all types of products without vetting them, it’s refreshing to find goods that artists actually had a hand in creating. It’s arguably even more refreshing when that product is a limited release, locally brewed beer that you can enjoy at your favorite band’s show when they pass through town.

Dulles-based Ocelot Brewing Company has mastered this exact type of artist-driven collaboration. City Paper previously reported on their U Want It U Got It brew with New York City-based band Palehound in October, but that was just one of five artistic collaborations the brewery undertook with internationally acclaimed bands last year. In 2023, Ocelot also worked with Fucked Up, Protomartyr, the Clientele, and Superchunk to put out five distinct beers available to Ocelot’s DMV clientele.

Jack Snyder, Ocelot’s head brewer, and staff member Phil Runco are the two masterminds behind these creations that have drawn attention to the brewery’s creative approach to crafting craft beer. Turns out, music is at the core of who Ocelot is and what Ocelot does—named after the eponymous Phish song, its logo is a guitar pick, and its slogan is “a music-loving brewery in NoVa.” The team’s love of music paired with its inherent love of beer results in one-of-a-kind creations.

Runco came to Ocelot after writing about them extensively as the beer editor for the now shuttered Brightest Young Things; he wanted to help tell the brewery’s story in new ways. “In the beginning of 2021, I was looking for an outlet for writing and being creative so I asked Ocelot if I could help with their social media,” Runco tells City Paper. “I wasn’t looking for a gig. I just love Ocelot’s beer and I know the stories behind the beers and I would love to tell them.” In the three years since, Runco has jazzed up the brewery’s social media presence, press releases, and photography in an effort to better capture the holistic story behind each beverage.

Before serving as beer editor, Runco previously worked as BYT’s music editor, where he built and sustained relationships with music labels and bands. His direct tie to the music industry has allowed Ocelot to reach out to some of their favorite artists with the pitch of creating one-of-a-kind beers together. 

In late 2022, Runco approached Adrien Widman, who along with his wife, Laura Widman, co-founded the brewery, with the idea of collaborating with big-name bands to make limited run beers. “If we’re going to be about it, let’s really be about it,” Runco recalls saying. “If we’re the music brewery, we should be working with bands.” Widman loved the idea.

The perfect opportunity came at the end of 2022, when staff favorite Fucked Up, a Canadian hardcore punk band, announced an upcoming album release. Runco and Snyder contacted the band through their label, Merge, to see if the band was interested in working together on a beer tied to the album’s release. Fucked Up responded enthusiastically. 

“I’m the big beer drinker in Fucked Up,” drummer Jonah Falco says. “So when this opportunity came along I think they knew that I’d be excited.” Falco shared that after watching and supporting other bands attempt to create one-off small-batch beers, “I was really enthusiastic about being in the front seat for this one. I could taste the beer of my dreams already.”

Christina Rentz, label manager at Merge, was similarly excited about the idea. “I don’t know that anything surprised us other than the endless generosity and openness of both Phil and the Ocelot team to make cool beer that had a real connection to the music and the artists involved,” she recalls.

Once Merge and Fucked Up signed on to work with Ocelot, the brainstorming phase began. The band came up with a saison called One Day after the impending album. Falco chose to be very hands-on in the process. “Ocelot really know how to make a great beer but they allowed everything from flavor and brewing notes to helping choose hops partly filter through me,” says Falco. “It was a great experience.” 

While Runco handles most of the front-end communication and brainstorming with the bands, Snyder is responsible for the actual brewing and execution of the band’s vision. He has the difficult task of bringing the band’s wildest beer desires to fruition. “I’ve done probably close to 100 collabs with other breweries. Having a band is different because we let the artists direct us artistically,” Snyder explains, before adding: “We shepherd if things get really wild.” 

The success of the Fucked Up collaboration allowed Ocelot to continue working with artists. This time, they were able to tell bands and labels that they had, in fact, successfully done this type of project before. Since then the brewery has partnered with four other acts, who each took an individualized approach to the creative and production processes, often based on their level of knowledge and interest in beer. El Kempner of Palehound chose to be very hands-on in the creation of the beer U Want It U Got It. They got the sour they always wanted through ongoing communication with Runco and Snyder. The label for Protomartyr’s Formal Growth in the Desert lager was designed by the band’s drummer—a collage of photo-shoot outtakes. Similarly, the Clientele used an original art rendering for the label of their Conjuring Summer pale ale.

Superchunk’s Superczech lager, released in December, was the brewery’s most recent band collab. It followed Superchunk’s October release of Misfits & Mistakes: Singles, B-sides & Strays 2007–2023 box set. The brew’s name came about after the team internally dubbed the beer Superczech. A December press release from Ocelot says, “We jokingly referred to it as Superczech for months, and while more ‘serious’ options were subsequently entertained, sometimes a silly idea sticks and you end up with a naturally carbonated pale lager called Superczech. It’s sort of like how sometimes you name a college band after a phone book typo and that group is still going strong more than three decades later.” 

That last line is an ode to Superchunk’s name itself. The band’s original drummer Chuck Garrison’s name was misspelled in the phone book as “Chunk” Garrison and the band went by Chunk for a year before adding the prefix “super” to avoid confusion with another band.

“Going into this, I figured that bands would communicate an initial vision and we’d run with it,” says Runco. “While a band may only be making one beer as part of an album’s rollout, they’ve got merch to design and approve, they’ve got interviews, they’ve got practice, they have touring logistics, they have things that I don’t even know about. They’re busy people! But, to my surprise, there hasn’t been a whiff of annoyance. They genuinely seem to want to be a part of the process every step of the way.”

Each collaboration ends, if the circumstances allow, with Runco and Snyder delivering their final creation to the band, often at the local venue where the band is performing. There, the entire team can enjoy the beer together. “We’re here to make something the band likes first and foremost,” shares Runco. In those moments, they get to see the enjoyment happen in real time.

“Damian [Abraham from Fucked Up], someone who really has no interest in beer whatsoever, claims it’s the only beer that’s made him want to have a second one. To this day he stands by it being the most enjoyable beer he’s had,” Falco says. “He drank three at our show in D.C.!”

The Ocelot team will be cracking open some more cold ones in 2024: They already have two upcoming musician collaborations in the works. Their first creation is with local musician and songwriter Mary Timony of Ex Hex, Wild Flag, and Helium—an IPA named High Frequency Zone. Timony, a long-standing legend of the D.C. rock scene whose new solo album, Untame the Tiger, comes out Feb. 23, now joins the selective list of Ocelot collaborators. 

“It’s pretty cool that she’s local. Mary being in the area means that we can drop off beer for her every once in a while now,” says Runco. 

While Ocelot primarily brews IPAs, this will be their first IPA band collaboration. As Snyder notes: “I thought at this point we would’ve done an IPA but it makes sense … If I were sweating and expressing myself on stage, I wouldn’t want to be crushing a 7 percent IPA.” Still, Snyder adds, “Kicking off 2024 with an IPA feels right.”

High Frequency Zone will be canned and released on March 13—the day before Timony’s Black Cat show.

Soon after, Ocelot will drop another brew, Beer Mag, made in collaboration with the Philadelphia-based band Sheer Mag on March 27. The sub-5 percent ABV lager is brewed with both heirloom malted rice and flaked rice. The band will play Songbyrd on March 29 with cans of Beer Mag in tow.

What makes each of these collaborations so special is their ephemeral nature. Once a run sells out, it’s gone for good, which makes it all the more important for interested consumers to buy a case or two as soon as possible. 

“We treat each of these collaborations in a vacuum. It’s not a series we’re doing. We start from scratch on every one. That’s why the art is so different, the brews are so different. There’s no formula we’re plugging these artists into,” says Runco.

When asked about the future of these collaborations, Snyder offers, “The fun thing is you have to put your back into all of these. You never know which collab could be the last. We’re at the mercy of the artists we love and when they release music.” 

For Runco, Synder, and the rest of the Ocelot team—not to mention the bands they work with—these beers are a true labor of love that thankfully don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.