DRAFT Magazine

If Kid Rock can get his own beer why can’t other “rock stars”?

Pittsburgh rock and roll legend Donnie Iris will debut his very own beer, King Cool Light, tonight at a concert held at Diesel on the South Side. Iris told Channel 4 Action(!)* News that the name “just seemed to go with the whole beer thing, for some reason. It sounds right.”

Lions Brewery will produce the brew that’s named after the second record from Donnie Iris and The Cruisers’. Because really, there’s nothing cooler than having a beer named after you.

* emphasis DRAFTMag.com’s own

We’ve been tracking the progress of Kid Rock’s new American Badass Beer for some time now. We think it debuted a couple weeks ago during a concert the rocker put on at Comerica Park in ChicagoDetroit, but we can’t find word of it anywhere on the old Internet. Strange.

The SFGate features a short post about the success of the brand so far, although it seems as though the author uses old quotes. That’s as close as we’ve come in our admittedly less-than-thorough search.

So we’re wondering, has anyone tried it? What’s it taste like? Would you buy it? And how was the show, of course?

It’s finally here. After months of waiting, Kid Rock’s brew — American Badass Beer — will hit the stands at Comerica Park this weekend during the rocker’s two shows.

The statement from J. Patrick Kenny, CEO of Drinks Americas:

“We will launch American Badass Beer in Michigan starting with Comerica Park and then rolling out to the balance of the Michigan market. Kegs will be available followed by 12 oz. and 22 oz. bottles. We are very excited about the interest we are getting from distributors and retailers driven by consumers looking for the brand. As we said at the start of the partnership with Kid Rock, the beer will be an easy to drink American Style Lager. We look forward to selling a lot of great tasting American Badass Beer.”

Anyone braving the crowds this weekend and want to send us a dispatch? Email us.

Kid Rock, whose entry into the craft beer world we’ve been chronicling for some time, is almost ready for his big debut.

Kid Rock’s Badass Beer will be available at the rocker’s shows at Comerica Park on July 17 and 18. So in other words, he’s launching his brew in front of a captive audience of his biggest fans. Talk about brilliant marketing…

Not only that, but the Webberville-based Michigan Brewing Company will start production of the beer on July 4th. Again, with that brilliant marketing thing. Where do we hire these people for our lives?

In February, we told you about a new beer rock star/American icon Kid Rock was producing in conjunction with Michigan Brewing Co. Now, he’s talking to Rolling Stone about the brew, called Bad Ass Beer and tentatively scheduled to hit stands around Labor Day. Rock calls it a “good American light beer, a regular beer, and a light beer, an everyday beer,” but he seems most excited about the advertising campaign.

It’s going to be called Bad Ass Beer. The ads are so funny. There are so many funny ads you can do with a thing called Bad Ass Beer. There’s one where it looks like the Budweiser horses, and they’re all up in the air, just freaked out, like they went haywire, and whatever they ride on is smashed up, and it just has my beer sitting in the front, it says “Bad Ass.” And “…and the horses they rode in on.” There’s another one where we fuck with Corona. We have an old rusty truck with no tires on it and it’s sitting on the Bad Ass beer, and it says, “The only way you’ll ever see a lemon on it.”

(Don’t you put a lime in Corona?)