Craft Coming Together
The Colorado Brewers Guild's annual Collaboration Fest was better than ever, with stellar beers from all over the state. Plus: Frost Fest tickets are on sale and our latest Tap & Table podcast is out!
Special thanks to the Colorado Brewers Guild for having us at the event, we appreciate all they do for craft beer here in Colorado.
Thanks to Josh Howard for providing me with words to go with my images:
Collaboration Fest 2024 reinforced for us that this is one of the top fests in the state. A festival that not only provides support to the valuable efforts of the Colorado Brewer’s Guild, but also because it fully embraces the collaborative spirit of the state’s brewing industry we love so much.
The beers were top notch, of course, and the venue in the Westin Westminster in its second year as the host proved to be a solid choice (it is nice to have a room at your beer festival when you are from out of town). Splitting the festival into two ballrooms is a solid choice and keeps the crowds spread out. We only really noticed a crowd on one wall where there seemed to be a lot more brewers than in other areas. Sounded like that congestion would be addressed in next year’s layout, so the Guild is well on top of keeping the crowd flowing as easily as the beer.
No bad beers – everything we sampled at Collaboration fest was excellent. No bad beers were had, though to be fair we could not possibly taste our way through all the 136 beers available.
There were certainly a number of unique beers that absolutely tasted true to their descriptions that we’re not sure we’d want more than a tasters worth because they were just a little MUCH, but that’s half the fun of the festival - the unique beers that only come from collaboration between 2, or sometimes more, breweries.
We were excited to see so many Colorado Springs breweries participating in the festival as well. Fossil hosted the Beer Media for a brew day, and other Springs-based collaborations were as follows:
Colorado Beer Media and Fossil – Hoppy Lager
Elevation and OCC Brewing – Imperial Altbier
Kokopelli and Manitou – Belgian Wit
OCC and Old 121 – London Brown Ale / Gruit
Phantom Canyon and Bell Brothers – English Mild
Phantom Canyon and Evergreen – French Saison
Red Swing and Peaks N Pines – Dry Hopped Czech Lager w/ Green Tea
Urban Animal and Wiley Roots – West Coast DIPA
Westfax and Urban Animal – Cold IPA
Our Favorites
While it is usually festival suicide to focus on big, barrel-aged beers, they were among our top favorites at the festival. We balanced them out with a fair number of delicious lagers and lighter beers as well:
Burns Family Artisan Ales and River North Collaborations – blended barreled barleywine and blended barreled stout – These approximately 16 percent ABV apiece bangers were dangerous and delicious. The best sort of combo.
Verboten Brewing and Liquid Mechanics – Munichwine – they had us at double barreled, and this one kicked before the fest was over.
Odell (Sloan’s Lake) and Mythmaker – Finnish Sahti, this really hit the mark on the style, but also eased off the juniper, which we thought made it a lot more approachable.
Strange Craft, Guanella Pass, and Gravity Brewing – Belgian Brut – Crisp and bright, a nice contrast to the barrel aged beers.
Two22 Brew and Fiction – Belgian Blonde – Named Pinky Swear in reference to a bit of an inside joke with former Springs brewer Jeff Airman and Kjell Wygant.
Wiley Roots and Streetside – Imperial Pastry Stout – This stout tasted like vanilla cake. It was wild. It was delicious.
Downhill and Lone Tree - Buzz Lightyear Belgian Wit – This was a blue-colored witbier that was paired with szechuan flowers to numb your mouth and smooth the flavor out. We geeked out with John Schneider a little bit, partially joking about the blue color (spirulina not dye) but also how good it tasted.
Our Photos
Frost Fest Tickets
Frost Fest Tickets are going fast.
There’s a ton of local and regional breweries attending the Frost Fest Southern Colorado Collaboration Brew fest happening at Bear Creek Regional Park on May 11th. Make sure to snag a ticket before they sell out!
Tap & Table Episode 7 with Kat Hess, Phantom’s new Head Brewer
This will be the last Focal Pint newsletter for the foreseeable future. It hurts to say that, but I need to focus on some other things like my own mental health, my family and the Tap & Table podcast I’m co-hosting with Matthew Schniper. I’m not going anywhere, but I’m just focusing on the beer a bit less for awhile.
Cheers,