Do you like beer flavored beer? Are fruited pastry sour stouts not your thing? Collaboration Fest gets a lot of attention for its fun, weird, and crazy ingredients and beers. But for those who want to drink a more traditional beer, we still have many of those to choose from! The following beers are more traditional, but often have a great story behind them.
Stories are told by the brewers.
Beer: The Rice and Crispy Treat – Dry-Hopped Rice Lager
Story: See Welcome Beer Story – coming soon!
Beer: přátelé piva – Czech Pilsner
Story: AJ the owner of Angry James Brewery in Silverthorne grew up down the road from where Locavore Beer works is located. AJ has been frequenting Locavore when visiting his parents in Littleton on weekends and holidays over the years. This past Christmas, AJ was in there having a beer with the brewers at Locavore, and after a few tasty brews, and the conversation lubed, they thought ‘Hey! Let’s do a collab!’ The rest is history.
Beer: Mountain Goats – Oatmeal Stout
Story: Everybody kept coming to Broken Compass bragging about the beer at AJ’s and ORB so we decided we better figure out who these guys are! Collab time! It had been a minute since any of us had done an oatmeal stout so that’s what we made!
Beer: Swiss Trail Pale – West Coast Pale Ale
Story: There is a long history of hoppy collaborations between Cannonball Creek and Mike Aubuchon. Mike was the head brewer at Pizza Port Carlsbad for many years and now runs the show at Heritage Barbecue and Beer. Collaboration fest was the perfect excuse for these old friends and like- minded brewers to create another hop forward and highly drinkable beer at Mike’s new stomping grounds.
Beer: Dub 12° – Polotmavý Ležák
Story: This beer was a continued exploration of Czech lager styles, but in the spirit of collaboration, we added a twist. Polotmavý Ležák is the Amber lager style in Czechia, and we brewed a classic base example of this beer then aged it on medium toast French Oak to add some complexity to the brew. Double decocted and brewed with Colorado grown malt, this beer has some rich caramel, bready notes with a pleasant oaky finish.
Beer: Willkommen! (Welcome!) – Nouveau Kölsch
Story: A brew initiated by Hopsteiner, using two newer hops: Contessa and Akoya, showcased in a bright, otherwise classic Kölsch style. A beer to welcome; combining the skill of Great Divide’s innovation team, and the experience of Burns Family Artisan Ales.
Beer: West Coast Cartel – West Coast IPA
Story: West Coast Cartel is a series of IPAs brewed in collaboration with some of the best West Coast IPA brewers in the country. This iteration with El Segundo is dry hopped with El Dorado, Simcoe, Mosaic Cryo and Nelson Sauvin Cryo.
Beer: Old School 10° – Altbier
Story: This collaboration uses Novel Strand’s Altbier recipe as a base, and incorporates techniques specific to Cohesion’s brewing and fermenting processes, such as a single decoction and open fermentation. It is cold fermented and lagered for a few weeks to ensure it is smooth, crisp, and delicious.
Beer: Mountain of the Sun Pale Ale – American Pale Ale
Story: Something old, something new! We took a great old friendship and applied it to showcasing one of Hopsteiner’s newest hop varieties. Pikes Peak Brewing and Hopsteiner used Helios, a new, ultra-sustainable, super high alpha hop and meshed it into an American Pale Ale. Used in both its traditional pellet form and as Salvo, its most innovative format, which provides all of the hop’s aromas in an efficient extract, adding no additional bitterness. The result is a celebration of the best of old and new!
Beer: American IPA
Story: We like their beer, they like ours. They said, “hey would you like to collab sometime?” Then we said, “yeah! we should collab for THE CBG collab fest!” Then we high fived.
Beer: Mountain of the Sun – American Pale Ale
Story: Something old, something new! We took a great old friendship and applied it to showcasing one of Hopsteiner’s newest hop varieties. Pikes Peak Brewing and Hopsteiner used Helios, a new, ultra-sustainable, super high alpha hop and meshed it into an American Pale Ale. Used in both its traditional pellet form and as Salvo, its most innovative format, which provides all of the hop’s aromas in an efficient extract, adding no additional bitterness. The result is a celebration of the best of old and new!
Beer: Baltic Porter
Story: Seedstock and Prost Brewing embarked on a journey to produce a strong dark lager to help everyone survive the winter months. The prize from this journey was a delightfully flavorful and easy drinking baltic porter. With notes of chocolate, red berries, and subtle coffee roast this beer should be everything dark beer lovers dream.
Beer: Kolsch
Story: Both Seedstock and Prost focus on classic styles and wanted to showcase our favorite styles. A nod to tradition, with delicate malt and yeast characteristics and subtle hop aroma and balanced mid palate bitterness.
Beer: Landbier (Keller Style Amber Lager)
Story: Prost and Station 26 wanted to showcase how beautiful weyermann malts are so we chose Isaria 1924 heirloom malt. The results were a toasty, bready elegant keller style amber lager. Beautifully balanced with light floral hop characteristics resulting in a beautiful malt flavor with a crispy finish.
Beer: Proportional Contribution – West Coast IPA
Story: Long story short this beer is just about getting the chance to make a beer we want to drink with my homies. There’s really nothing better than making beer with friends.
Beer: Mezek Pivo – Czech Amber Lager
Story: Iron Mule and Rockyard have been staples of the Castle Rock craft beer scene for many years. Both breweries are minutes apart from each other and we wanted to collaborate on a classic style that neither brewery had produced in the past.
Beer: Molasses Madness – Molasses Brown Ale
Story: Dave, Dave, and Shaun have a combined history that involves making a lot of Hazy IPA’s. So when it came time to figure out what to brew, the opposite of a Hazy IPA was the clear answer.
Beer: Corner Boyz – Malt Liquor
Story: A craft Malt Liquor brewed with rice and corn, then dry-hopped with Simcoe and Amarillo. 7.5% abv. The “Boyz” brewed this one to celebrate the continued friendships of our two breweries – Guanella Pass at the corner of 5th & Rose in Georgetown, and Strange Craft at the corner of 13th & Zuni in Denver.
Beer: Maibock
Story: Evan Beggs, Head Brewer for WestFax did his internship at Platt Park under Greg Matthews. They had a mutual interest in getting back together to make a more traditional beer style. We settled on a Maibock due to seasonality and clean drinkability of the style.