Angel City Brewing's Newest Beer Is an "Alien: Romulus" Tie-In

You don’t have to look too far to find craft breweries drawing inspiration from summer blockbusters, either officially or unofficially. This weekend’s big theatrical release is Alien: Romulus, and it may come as no surprise to cinephiles with a taste for craft beer that one enterprising brewery has decided to evoke the cinematic universe where xenomorphs menace humans in space and Michael Fassbender plays multiple androids.

The brewery in question is Angel City Brewery, who are no stranger to high-profile partnerships. In this case, it’s a blonde ale called Aspen Beer, obstensibly commissioned by the fictional corporation Weyland-Yutani, whose ominous business dealings and sinister genetic experiments play a role in almost all of the Alien films.

Is it an odd choice to name a beer after one of the film’s antagonists? Possibly — though it could always be creepier. You’ve got to imagine that somewhere, there’s a mock-up of a can of “Chestburster Porter” or something similar that never got anywhere close to production.

As Jeff Spry points out at Space.com, Aspen Beer was a frequently-used prop in the background of director Ridley Scott’s original Alien. At 5.0% ABV, this does look to be an eminently drinkable beer, and something that’s well-suited to, say, a pint while taking in a screening at a booze-friendly movie theater.

When Summer Blockbusters Inspire Fantastic Craft Beer Names

Craft brewers do enjoy wordplay, don’t they?

The brewing of actual Aspen Beer also opens the door for one brewery to do, as the saying goes, the funniest thing ever. Perhaps the funniest moment in Mel Brooks’s science fiction parody Spaceballs came near the end, when Alien‘s John Hurt made a cameo in a brilliant send-up of his onscreen death in Scott’s film. And with a Spaceballs sequel in the works, all of the elements are there for Spaceballs: The Beer. Craft brewing world, please make this happen.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…