Brewery collaborations the good and the bad

I really love Collaboration Not Litigation (Avery/Russian River), and is probably the best one I've actually tasted. I also have the Hamajang sitting in my basement right now (Jolly Pumpkin/Evil Twin/Mikkeller/Leelanau). I've heard amazing things about that one, and am looking forward to giving it a shot!

I wasn't a fan of most of the Beer Camp collaborations. Not one of them was bad, but most of them just didn't seem to do anything terribly interesting, and none of them stood out as good enough that I would search them out over other readily available options.

 

The only collab I can recall that produced a truly great beer was the CCB/Mikelller collab on Life Is Like. Almost universally I have found most others to be disappointing.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/17981/98045/

 

Mikkeller recently criticized what collaboration brewing has become.

I've found Stone's collaborations tend to be better than their own beers, generally speaking. Especially when the recipe being used is a homebrewer's.

 

Some of the good ones that I have had are:

Fourthmeal - The Bruery/Maine Beer
Bo & Luke - Against the Grain/Brouwerij de Molen
Brewmance - Omnipollo/To Ol

Many more of them that I've tried have been mediocre.

 

And will most likely remain so into the forseeable future if only because experts often can't tell you what they know.

They can show someone on the spot and under the appropriate circumstances, but describing it with all the critical choices and choice points documented as if to be followed by a computer is incredibly hard to do.

 

Hmmm, sort of depends on how your meal turned out.

 

I had a smile on my face as I ate my dinner.

Pretty simple dinner: grilled chicken legs, steamed green beans and some baked beans.

Cheers!

P.S. Hindsight being 20/20 I should have had one of my homebrewed Kolsch beers with my meal.

 

Generally they aren't good. I agree with the above that Life is Like is probably the best I've had and I'll give a shout to Mekong as well which was Answer brewpub & CCB. I think the problem most of the time is that the breweries end up producing a style that neither is very good at or known for since they are trying to come up with something special or different.

So the good ones mentioned above are stouts from CCB or OH/Trillium, OH/TH IPAs etc. If one of the breweries is awesome at the style then it's hard to produce a bad beer.

 

Some good ones for me were:

SN/Brauhaus - Oktoberfest 15
Stone/4 Hands/Bale Breaker - Sorry Im Not Sorry IPA
Lawsons/Otter Creek - Double Dose IPA

 

Isn't Mikkleller a gypsy brewer? Seems kinda hypocritical to poo-poo on collabs (the share aspect I mean...)

 

Planning is for brewing, not cooking!

I remember my father cooking one thing besides grilling and that was venison goulash. Cast iron skillet, burner as hot as it would go. Ma would yell at him to turn the heat down and every time he would say if it cooks good on medium, it will cook twice as good on high... Now the pros would say high heat to get a good sear.

 

Larry, I cook a dish that I call sausage goulash. Pretty simple, some breakfast type sausage (e.g, Jimmie Deans in a 'tube'), canned green beans (unsalted), Stewed Tomatoes, tomato paste, and a few dashes of Tabasco Sauce. I cook it low and slow and make some biscuits to go with it. It is soooo good!!

My wife refuses to eat it so this is a 'dish' I make when she is away on a business trip.

This 'dish' is best accompanied by a homebrewed beer!!

Cheers!

@utopiajane

 

Creature Comforts/7venth Sun Southerly Love is pure art.

 

Sierra Nevada's collab with Brauhaus Riegele on the Oktoberfest last year was pretty damn good.

 

I agree with @cavedave, most collaborations are not better than the beers brewed by the individual brewers. I do enjoy Collaboration Not Litigation by Russian River and Avery but that is only because I can't get RR Salvation unless I drive 8 hours north to RR.

 

It's not a collaboration. It's Evil Twin beer, but it's brewed at/by Westbrook.

 

The Hill Farmstead Grassroots Brother Soigné was amazing.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/23205/93400/