Collaboration beers are becoming extremely popular. These involve brewers from different breweries teaming together to create an interesting brew and learn from one another.Collaboration is becoming the lifeblood of the craft brewing industry. It is part of the creative process of a brewery@ says Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver, one of the most active brewers forging such zymological alliances.
Oliver probably started the craft beer collaboration trickle that has become a flood of new and unique beers. In the late 1990s Oliver traveled to England and brewed Brooklyn Bridge Bitter at the famous Brakspear Brewery in Henley-on-Thames. Oliver says his efforts to find an earlier craft collaboration have been unsuccessful thus far. Why do breweries collabeerate? Stone Brewing CEO Greg Koch believes that AWe live the brewer=s art. Collaboration helps express and advance that. It infuses spirit, passion and knowledge.@ Oliver experientially adds AIt changed my way of thinking. I became much more creative. It keeps us on our toes and adds spark.@
The most popular collaborations involve two or three brewers, usually at one of the participating breweries which then supplies the ingredients and facilities, arranges for label approval if the beer is bottled, and sells it through that brewery=s distributors. As part of the innovation, these beers often have new and interesting ingredients. Some recent additions include curry, tamarind, turbinado raw sugar, chia (as in Chia Pet), roses, and Tasmanian pepperberries.
Often such collaborations are between a U.S. and foreign brewery. One unusual collaboration involves Boston Beer, makers of the Samuel Adams brand, and Weihenstephan, the oldest brewery in the world and one of two German brewing academies. Jim Koch, the Boston Beer president, inquisitively asked the head of Weihenstephan AWhy do you, of all people, need us?@ The reply was simply AWe are not good at innovating and you are the best innovator.@ The result of this synergy will be a new style beer brewed within the German Reinheitsgebot beer purity law. This yet-unnamed projected high alcohol, champagne-like beer will be available in mid-2010.
These alliances are basically a win-win situation for all concerned. American brewers serve as craft beer ambassadors while enhancing their resumes and getting to brew with foreign brethren of great renown and broad experience. American brewers are learning more about the precision of European brewing, European methods, and making delicious low alcohol beersThe foreign brewers appreciate the creativity of American brewers and the ability to expand their own brewing horizons. Moreover, the brewers often brew something they have never brewed before and have a great deal of fun while learning in the process. As Greg Koch says AWe get to brew something we would not brew ourselves.@
Examples of these abound. The celebrated creator of the Double IPA-style, Vinnie Cilurzo=s favorite collaboration involved Agostino Arioli, founder of Birrifcio Italiano, who came to the Santa Rosa, CA brewery and created La Fleurette with Cilurzo using turbinado raw sugar, orange blossom honey and black pepper, dry hopping with roses and violets and adding elderberry concentrate. Cilurzo said Ait reminded me not to forget my roots@ and that Ayou can brew a beer that=s so full of flavor but only has 4.5 percent ABV.@
Stone Brewing=s brewmaster Mitch Steele, heading Koch=s passion for collaboration, has joined forces in threesomes with Mikkel Bjergso of Denmark=s Mikkeller Brewing and Peter Zien of Alesmith in California (Belgian Style Triple Ale); Kjetil Jikium of Norway=s Nogne-O and Ron Jeffries of Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales in Michigan (Special Holiday Ale); and James Watt of Scotland=s BrewDog together with Cambridge Brewing=s Will Meyers (Juxtaposition Black Pilsner).
Steve Pauwels, the Belgian-born brewer of Kansas City=s Boulevard Brewing, invited his friend and mentor, the legendary head brewer of Orval, Jean-Marie Rock, to collaborate. Pauwels says it was Alike having an auditor come in@ to Boulevard. They created Imperial Pilsner by resurrecting a brewing technique from decades earlier in Rock=s career, first wort hopping in which hops are added at the very beginning of the boil, a technique no longer used in Belgium. Imperial Pilsner was Abalanced with subtle hop crispness@ according to Pauwels who now is using first wort hopping in other beers.
Dogfish Head owner Sam Calagione started collaborating with the Herold Brewery in Prague, brewing an Imperial Pilsner called Golden Revolution based on Dogfish=s Golden Shower, and bringing imperialization to the land that gave us the pilsner style. Caligione later brewed a Danish Sour Gruit ale based on a 15th century recipe with Anders Kissmeyer from Norrebro Bryghus Brewery in Copenhagen, using smoked dark syrup, fir branches and bark, wood sage, hyssop, blackthorn berries, woodruff, and star spice. Calagione also brewed another Imperial Pilsner, My Antonia (named after a Willa Cather novel), at Birra del Borgo outside Rome, Italy with owner/brewer Leonardo DiVencenzo in October of 2008 with DiVencenzo returning the favor to brew Namaste in June, 2009. Mi Antonia is now on the regular brewing schedule for Dogfish for April and November releases.
A unique, recently announced collaboration brewpub venture in New York involves Caligione, Russian River Brewing=s Vinnie Cilurzo, DiVencenzo and another Italian brewer, Teo Musso, of Birrificio Le Baladin, as well as Italian chefs from New York and the artisinal Italian market Eataly. The four brewers are working together on recipes for the Eatalys house beers featuring Italian and American ingredients and will also occasionally brew beers under their own names onsite.
Dogfish, Stone Brewing and Victory Brewing recently announced a collaboration called Saison du BUFF (Brewers United for Freedom of Flavor). It will first be brewed at Stone and then replicated at each of the other two breweries with the same recipe and ingredients. Plans call for Saison du BUFF to be a 6% alc/vol Saison brewed with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Obviously the breweries are fans of Simon and Garfunkel. The expected release dates for each brew are: Stone Brewing Co.- 5/3/2010, Victory Brewing-July, 2010, and Dogfish Head-August, 2010.
Perhaps Oliver=s most famous collaboration was based on his decade-long friendship with Hans-Peter Drexler of Munich=s G. Schneider and Sohn, the originator of the weissbier. The widely-distributed American and German Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen Weisse was a hoppy weissbock, brewed in Munich with German ingredients and in Brooklyn with American hops and malt. Both were available in the U.S. for comparison. Oliver introduced several American brewing ideas to Germany, including dry-hopping, to the beer which was the first un-decocted beer brewed at Schneider. The elder Georg Schneider loved the aggressively hopped beer so much he wanted to start an experimental section in the brewery.
Collaborations also are starting to include non-brewers. For the last few years the Firestone Walker anniversary beer has been created by bringing in local winemakers to blend beers from several vats to create the taste they want. In 2007, Flying Dog brewed Collaborator Doppelbock by posting a recipe online and getting input from its customers and making many changes. Widmer regularly brews beers proposed by homebrew members of the Oregon Brew Crew. Brooklyn Brewery has gone far afield, involving chefs, bakers, and even a mixologist who helped create a beer called Manhattan that, according to Oliver, tasted "...just like the cocktail" of the same name.