DENVER – Beer aficionados in the Denver area were in for quite the treat Saturday at the fourth annual Collaboration Fest which featured 181 breweries, including Durango’s own Steamworks and Ska Brewing companies and nearby Telluride Brewing.
Brian McEachron, co-founder of Steamworks Brewing Co., which has joined the festival every year since its inception, said this festival gives breweries a chance to showcase the diversity in the world of microbrewing, the unique spirit of the industry and where it is headed in the future.
“It’s fun because most of those (beers) are one-offs that you’re never gonna get to try again,” McEachron said. “It definitely speaks to where the movement is going towards with the advent of nanobreweries and smaller breweries. I mean, look at what’s happening in Denver. There’s a lot of new players to the game and their footprints are a lot smaller.”
But with ever-increasing variety and competition, why collaborate? Because it’s in their blood, McEachron said. “If all we were doing was trying to beat each other up, we wouldn’t be spending a lot of time on our guest experience, on our employee relationship. I think it’s just an ethos that permeates.”
The event, and the brewing leading up to it, also represents an opportunity for brewers to share their success, their failures and learn from one another.
“In those moments around a brew kettle, a lot of what goes on and a lot of the hurdles and hoops that you run into you realize that they (other brewers) are knocking through the same barriers and therein lies an opportunity to do something smarter the next time and not fall the same way,” McEachron said.
The history behind collaboration doesn’t hurt either, pointed out Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who opened Wynkoop Brewing Co., Colorado’s first brewpub, in 1988.
“We created the LoDO Brewers Festival around 1990,” Hickenlooper said in an email. “The different breweries came together and showcased their various brews. It was a truly friendly and collaborative rivalry. These relationships led to collaborative brews developed between breweries, often for nonprofit organizations; a fine tradition that continues to this day.”
That tradition was showcased by the 110 unique brews available Saturday, each of which represented a joint effort by at least two, and in some cases 11, brewing companies with their own fun and funky names.
Some highlights included “Enemy of the People IPA,” which was brewed by Great Divide Brewing Co. in collaboration with several media outlets in the Denver area and named in response to the Trump administration’s ongoing war with the media.
Odd13 and New Image Brewing tapped into the knock-knock joke hall of fame with a citrus Imperial Stout named “Orange You Surprised it’s not an IPA?” While Steamworks, in conjunction with Dry Dock Brewing, took us back to the early 1990s with “Rice, Rice Baby: Stop, Collaborate and Listen,” an American Light Lager which they hoped would stand out amongst the palate-busters some other companies brought to the party.
“I think you’re going to see there’s gonna be a lot of huge beers. I don’t know how many flippin’ super slammable beers there’ll be there, so I think you’ll see a nice little niche,” McEachron said.
Ska took a different approach with a coconut curry Hefeweizen named “Mr. Kelly’s” that lived up to its selling as something that “lingers on your tongue.”
The only stipulation on the beers brought to the Collaboration Fest was that teams had to include a Colorado-based brewery, said Sam Enders, brewer for Telluride Brewing Company.
This year was Telluride’s second year at the festival and they teamed up with Epic Brewing Company on a New England style IPA dubbed “Blizzard Conditions.”
For some, this event represented their first crack at the piñata, but for the old-schoolers such as Steamworks and Ska Brewing, the art of collaboration is old hack.
“Ska Brewing and Steamworks Brewing down here in little podunk Durango, we were one of the first breweries to ever do a true collaboration, and I think we beat out a couple of the big boys with the ‘Face Plant Pale Ale,’” McEachron said.
lperkins@durangoherald.com
