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This tri-state collaboration certainly set my Pavlovian response into hyperdrive. De Garde which is highly regarded in Oregon with their California equal in both esteem and small quantity of beer, Sante Adairius and noted Texas brewery Jester King.
Then blend their beers together for one super beer. Then create a super cool label with a lovely starry sky type of graphic.
I have left whale hunting behind but I would travel for this one.
You know that I am smitten with Firestone Walker. Just had the 003 Luponic Distortion at the Craft Beer Summit and now there are two more new ones on the horizon. One seemingly adversarial and the other friendlier.
This here blog talks a lot about collaborative beers. It is an essential aspect of craft beer (in my mind) that there is a working together that you don’t see in other realms of business. No Starbucks / Intelligentsia special coffee releases being one made up example.
But this latest collab is quite different. At least one half is. Off Color Brewing of Illinois is teaming up with none other than Miller High Life. Off Color’s brewer went to “old” Milwaukee and brewed on Miller’s pilot brewhouse (yes, even big brewers have pilot systems) and then the Miller team did the same at Off Color.
No word on what the final beer is but Los Angeles gets a trickle of Off Color beers so we might actually see it in the future.
The video says it all….
Brasserie Dupont has played around with a dry-hopped version of their Saison but now they are kicking it up a notch and doing the full San Diego with Tomme Arthur.
Side note: The collaborative duo will be at The Phoenix on 3rd Street on the 23rd to pour the new beer. First visit to L.A. for Oliver from Dupont and it was fortuitously scheduled for our L.A. Beer Week.
Sierra Nevada Brewing will be embarking on a yearly collaboration of Germanic proportions when they collaborate with Augsburg’s Brauhaus Riegele, for a brand new Oktoberfest beer.
I have, of late, bemoaned a lack of foreign beers in our mad dash for the most hyperlocal so this beer will shoot to the top of my list when it comes out in August because maltier beers deserve a place at the table too.
I appreciate the base beer choice by Stone and their collaborative partners. Past that I really don’t know. Three of those ingredients are sugar filled and the other might not have a chance to balance the proceedings. Oh and beet juice? And lacto?
You can tell right off the bat that this is a whiskey barrel beer that Widmer and Deschutes have put together. Wood chips and sweet caramel and a touch of the alcohol heat make this less German and more Kentucky. Back in December (and in Oregon) you could sample the barrel aged bitter next to the barrel aged alt, next to the blend of the two. I wish I had that luxury. I would love to see which beer stood up stronger against the whiskey. Because that is the main component that I get from this beer followed by a little bit of bitterness and spice. You could tell me that it is an imperial brown or an old ale and I wouldn’t be able to talk you off that opinion.
All that said, this is a a smooth and flavorful beer. I just wished that it was a little less barrel-y.
Devil’s Backbone has been busy on the West Coast. Maybe (just maybe) they are planning a future distribution to SoCal but at least we are getting 1/2 of their ideas via Ninkasi and now Coronado Brewing.
Where the Ninkasi team-up was an offbeat style, the Coronado is a straight up San Diego Pale ale, aka IPA. It pours a medium yellow color. Has a Pilsner look to it. The aroma has a bit of cat pee and mango to it. But that shouldn’t dissuade you because this is a nice light IPA. Dare I say session IPA? Not much of a malt presence here. Kind of light and almost too watery. But the grape accented finish works here and pulls it back from the brink.
If this beer was branded as an IPL, I would give it more favorable marks. Or call it an XPA. It’s nice and could pair well with citrus chicken or whitefish. On its own, it is a little too little for me.
Since you would have to go to great distance to get a Devil’s Backbone beer, it was with great anticipation that I saw that they had collaborated with Ninkasi on a beer.
Now let’s see what it tastes like…which is easier said than done. This is an odd duck of a beer. It’s labeled as an imperial rye but only is 7.7%. Maybe that is imperial by rye standards. The aroma is a combo of sawdust and caramel but the taste is quite dry and bitter. There is a tiny bit of candied orange peel bitterness in there as well. The alcohol level does show which is odd for this level of ABV. What gets me is the rye bread note. It makes this really toasty and I don’t quite know if it works as a whole.
Hood River to Highland Park. That is quite the distance for a collaboration but when the brewers at each have known each other for a long, long time then the miles don’t matter.
And now we have the pFriem Spaceship Pale Ale that is dosed with the German Huell Melon hops. Bob Kunz at Highland Park brewed with Josh of pFriem for this hoppy addition to the HPB family.
The pFriem Spaceship has an orange oil essence aroma while the taste toggles between cereal and orange (skin and essence). Overall this light orange/yellow beer is probably more in the hoppy XPA realm than pale ale. I just wish I had a pFriem pale to do a side by side comparison.
Beacause I am greedy.