Panhead Custom Ales Want You to Riff for Your Beers

If you’ve ever wished your riff skills could keep you in free beer for the forseeable future, you may either want to join a crappy cover band and play for drink tickets—or move to New Zealand and hang out at Panhead Custom Ales Brewery.

The bar has just unveiled a brand new vending machine called Slay To Play, which hands out free beers if you play guitar well enough. The machine is probably counting on drunk people playing horribly or guitarists who are normally good messing up because they’re drunk. It may have underestimated just how much metalheads love riffs and beer, even when we are inebriated.

“It’s essentially a souped up Guitar Hero for adults,” says Rebecca Sinclair, head of Brand at Panhead Custom Ales, in an interview with Guitar World. “As far as we know, this is a first of its kind machine with some pretty cool new tech and the best kind of reward for those willing to give it a go. No one has done this before.”

Those who try their luck at the machine will be playing an Epiphone Explorer and will be able to choose their genre. The AI in the program will then judge how well you play and see if you’re eligible for a free beer. And apparently, the machine isn’t going to go easy on you.

“The machine was the perfect combination of a couple of our favorite things, cold beer and really loud music,” added Sinclair. “We gave it its first run at the Panhead Rolling Stone Music Awards, and it turns out it’s pretty ruthless. It rejected some of the best guitarists in the country.”

We can already feel our readers itching to buy their plane tickets and try their own hands to see if they can beat out the master players for a cold one. The machine is currently on holiday break and will be back to judge more guitarists in 2024.