Beer Collabs: has the thrill gone?
The 2019 Brewdog Collab festival is underway.
I attended the first evening at Cardiff Brewdog and will be back to try more later in the weekend.
I’ll post on the event itself later-suffice to say its well worth stopping by if there is a Brewdog near you.
It does however pose a wider question of whether the thrill has gone from beer collabs, of which there are any number about, and what purpose they now serve.
Back in the day of course the beer collab was something more or less unheard of. Think of London Brick, a red rye beer brewed by Kernel, Redemption and others that still makes an occasional appearance. It was ground breaking.
Now I’m not always sure what the combination of two or more breweries is adding to what will usually in any case be a pretty decent beer.
Of course there are tweaks on the idea some of which are direct collabs-the recent Skyline project between London and US breweries-and some not, the Rainbow project (currently with Left Hand)last year’s North Sea Bridges project, where breweries collaborate around an idea rather than with the beer. Harbour’s forthcoming Terroir project looks interesting in this respect, using ingredients from within 20 miles of the participating breweries.
Perhaps we are moving on from the idea of collabs between brewers to brewers producing beers that collaborate around idea…
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