Bonds of Friendship
Collaborations don’t always come from the brewers; sometimes friendship is enough. Dustin Watts, who is the VP of Sales and Marketing for Terrapin Beer Co. in Athens, GA, has for many years been good friends with Chris Lennert, who just happens to be VP of Operations for Left Hand Brewing in Longmont, CO. After the idea emerged from a few late night pints at the Brick Store Pub in Decatur, the pair put brewers Spike Buckowski (Left Hand) and Ro Guenzel (Terrapin) together. The result is Terra-Rye’zd, a black rye lager (or Imperial roggen schwartz lager) brewed with nearly 50 percent rye malt. The collaboration series is called “The Midnight Project,” in honor of its inspiration, and the plan is to create a different beer each year between the two breweries.
Even today, with more opportunities for prospective brewers to learn brewing via internships and formal education programs, many still come up through the ranks of homebrewing. Three years ago, the Brewers Association, in an effort to support and encourage homebrewing, created the GABF Pro-Am, a program where “award winning homebrew recipes from American Homebrewers Association members” are made at a commercial brewery in partnership with a professional brewer, with the resulting beer entered into a special competition at the Great American Beer Festival.
Another type of collaboration is simply sharing facilities to benefit both breweries, such as the effort undertaken earlier this year between Elysian’s brewpub chain in Seattle and New Belgium Brewing in Colorado. But in addition to the more mundane sharing, the two brewers—Dick Cantwell and Peter Bouckaert—will also be collaborating on monthly draft-only beers that will be a twist on the type of beers they both currently make. Elysian’s Cantwell lays out their philosophy: “The plan is purposely free form and improvisational in nature, giving us an opportunity to spark an interest in innovative beers.” That program will start in December, possibly with a big, hoppy tripel IPA with a Belgian-style twist.
Same Beer, Different Brewery
Another type of collaboration is when brewers separately brew the same beer, but at their respective breweries. Both the Illinois and Indiana state brewers guilds have been brewing annual beers, known as Replicales, where each brewery follows the same recipes, but variations in yeast, malt and possibly hops make for beers which still taste wildly different.
In Washington state, the brewer’s guild—to honor brewpub pioneer Bert Grant, who passed away in 2001—began doing a collaborative brew for their annual cask ale festival. The recipe changes little from year to year, but at least a dozen brewers will stop by on brew day (which is at a different brewery each year) to work on the beer.
In California, Drake’s Brewery held a beer festival for a number of years (now retired) where each attending brewery would make an IPA using a single particular hop variety, such as Summit or Bravo. Then, on the day of the festival, as many as twenty-five IPAs, all brewed with the same hop but with different malt builds and/or yeast, could be sampled.
In yet another twist on brewing the same beer at different breweries, Todd Ashman of Fifty-Fifty Brewing in Truckee, CA, invited two brewers he admired—Matt Van Wyk from Flossmoor Station and Zac Triemert of Lucky Bucket Brewing—to join in him in a hands-on learning experience. Ashman wanted to “demonstrate that just as each brewer has a distinctive brewing style, each brewery also has attributes that make it unique: the local water supply, brewing equipment and ingredient sources all contribute to the distinctive character of a beer.”
Ashman created a recipe for a Belgian-style strong dark ale, in part because he wanted to work with raisin purée and other spices, and named it Collaborative Evil. The beer was essentially brewed by all three, following the same recipe, but using different yeasts and even different honey, another exotic ingredient. Because of these small variations, each beer had very distinct flavors and unique identity. The important thing for this type of collaboration, Ashman stresses, is to get them all together again to taste the differences. Next year, as many as nine breweries around the country are currently signed up to participate in Ashman’s project.
The Future of Brewing Together
While there is no doubt that collaboration beers are a growing trend, not everyone is convinced they’re here to stay. Everyone seems to have a different reason for doing them and perceives their value differently.
Some people fear that collaborative brews may simply be a way to generate publicity. Before doing his own jointly-brewed beer, Ron Jeffries admitted to feeling “a little cynical about them.” But after being involved in one, he’s had to rethink that assumption. For him, “the collaboration experience was spiritual,” as well as educational. “It was great to spend time with people I respected, but didn’t really know that well. It was great to see a little bit more of how and why they do what they do.”
Many people echo the sentiment that a collaboration must be more than just a marketing exercise. Collaborations are, by necessity, compromises. Jeffries feels that if it goes too far it becomes more marketing-driven instead of being all about creating a great beer. “That’s the danger,” he says.
Tomme Arthur makes a musical analogy: “There must be a point. You can put Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses on the same stage, but there’s no guarantee the results will be beautiful music.” Continuing the musical metaphors, Cilurzo adds, “Collaborations are like musician’s side projects, where you can gain inspiration. But it doesn’t mean the band breaks up.”
Arthur believes “there will continue to be a need for ambassadors overseas” providing an “opportunity to reach out. We all use the same ingredients, but there’s a world of difference.” Cilurzo adds, “In collaborations, you see things you might never have thought of on your own, and that’s the ultimate reward.” Calagione sees the trend as “a microcosmic symbol of how promiscuous the beer industry is, where we all share secrets with one another, where the consumer is generally catholic with their drinking habits, celebrating the breadth of styles available in the world.”
Todd Ashman sees collaborations as “a natural evolution” of the brewer’s networking experience and offers a way “to stay in touch with people you might not otherwise deal with regularly.” He adds, “It’s also a way to get your customers into the fold and keeps it interesting” for both them and the brewers. And that may be the truest test of all, that the consumers ultimately like and are willing to buy the collaboration beers.
While there is certainly competition among American craft brewers, it is a healthy competition, borne of trying to outdo one another, to show off, to push the envelope just a little bit farther. As Stone’s Mitch Steele says, “Craft brewers feed on what each other is doing.” Or as Calagione puts it, collaborations “remind everybody how creative and exciting the craft beer world is. Not only do we let our freak flag fly, but we also let it mingle.”
Undoubtedly, consumers can count on seeing and tasting more collaboration beers in the coming years. As long as brewers keep approaching the collaborations with their fellow brewers, whether at home or abroad, in the right spirit, then they’ll continue to create unique beers, often in limited quantities, that will keep the beer world continually excited about each new beer. As Dustin Watts, co-creator of the Midnight Project, sees the ultimate point of collaborations, they just scream, “Welcome to the world of craft beer, this is what it’s all about.”
