Chicago brewery, Billy Corgan's teahouse team up for beer celebrating 30th anniversary of "Mellon Collie" album
You don't have to think of the world as a vampire, or suffer like ol' Job.
In the resolute urgency of now, you can instead enjoy a special celebratory beer for the 30th anniversary of The Smashing Pumpkins' "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" album.
The Chicago brewery Hop Butcher For the World announced Wednesday that it has joined forces for the fourth time with Madame ZuZu's Emporium — the tea shop in the north Chicago suburb of Highland Park that Billy Corgan owns with his wife Chloé Mendel Corgan.
The brewery and Madame ZuZu's have developed the celebratory beer, "Twilight To Starlight," an 8.0% ABV hazy Double India Pale Ale with Motueka, Ella, and Simcoe hops. The beer is lightly infused with a Tropical Fruit Medley tea from Madame ZuZu's Emporium.
The beer is called "Twilight to Starlight," just like the second disc of the "Mellon Collie" CD. The first CD was titled "Dawn to Dusk."
"Twilight to Starlight" beer will be sold in 16-ounce cans, and will be available for sale starting at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12, at the Hop Butcher brewery, taproom, and retail store at 4257 N. Lincoln Ave. in the North Center neighborhood.
Four-packs of the beer will be distributed by the brewery to Chicago area stores between Wednesday, Nov. 12, and Friday, Nov. 14. Hop Butcher has provided a list of stores receiving the beer.
Can pours and screen prints of the artwork for the beer will also be sold at all seven sold-out performances of "A Night of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" at the Lyric Opera. Corgan composed a new commission of the classic album, which the Lyric described as "a completely new sonic and visual experience."
The Lyric Opera performances run from Friday, Nov. 21, through Sunday, Nov. 30.
"Madame ZuZu's was born out of a love for collaboration and celebrating our home; the city by the lake," Chloé Mendel Corgan said in the news release. "Hop Butcher is one of those Chicago institutions we adore – endlessly creative and devoted to the art. Partnering on something like Twilight to Starlight captures everything we adore about this community: good people, good ideas and a shared spirit of fun and culture."
Hop Butcher and Madame ZuZu's previously worked together on the celebratory beer "Soul Head," for the anniversary of the Smashing Pumpkins' first record, Gish in 2021; "ZuZu's Winter Garden Pale Ale" in 2022; and "Siamese Suds" to celebrate the anniversary of the Smashing Pumpkins album "Siamese Dream" in 2023.
"Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" was released on Oct. 23, 1995. The album went to No. 1 and sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. alone.
"Mellon Collie" has been compared by Corgan himself to The Beatles' White Album or Pink Floyd's "The Wall" — the latter of which, as it happens, came out the same year that Jane Byrne became mayor of Chicago, Disco Demolition Night happened at Comiskey Park, and… Junebug skipped like a stone with the headlights pointed at dawn.
