Beer 47 » collaboration

The Session #39: Collaborations

David Jensen — Sat, 08 May 2010 05:49:08 +0000

The Session #39 is being hosted by Mario Rubio at The Hop Press and the topic is Collaborations. The instructions for this Session were as follows:

Drink a collaborative beer. Who’s brewed some of your favorite collaborations? Who have been some of your favorite collaborators? Who would you like to see in a future collaboration? As the topic is collaborations, working with each other is encouraged.

Although I haven’t participated in the Session for a few months now, I couldn’t miss participating in this topic. Even though I’ve been a craft beer drinker for a number of years and I’ve been operating this blog for a year and a half, I can only recall one collaboration beer that I’ve tried. I was the SF Brewer’s Guild Imperial Common, which was available during SF Beer Week 2010. Although, the Imperial Common was a wonderful beer and a very appropriate style. In preparation for this topic, since I could not fill an entire article about one beer, I picked up a number of collaboration beers with plans to review each one before today. I picked up:

Mikkeller-BrewDog Devine Rebel
Sierra Nevada (with Anchor Brewing) 30th Anniversary Stout
BrewDog-Cambridge-Stone Juxtaposition Black Pilsner
21st Amendment-Firestone Walker-Stone El Camino (Un)Real Black Ale
Nøgne Ø-Jolly Pumpkin-Stone Special Holiday Ale
Nøgne Ø-Gahr Smith-Gahrsen Andrímnir Barley Wine Ale

The 21A-Firestone-Stone collaboration was especially difficult to track down but thanks to @wesleybeero, I got the last bottle from the Potrero Hill Whole Foods. I was all set last Saturday to crack open one of these bottles when I came down with a cold that just wouldn’t quit, all week long. So I’ll eventually get around to reviewing each of these beers and when I do, I’ll update the above list with links to each review. I did, however, crack open the Mikkeller-BrewDog last Wednesday and you can read the review of Devine Rebel here.

Since I’m not able to go over each collaboration beer, I’ll discuss the topic of collaboration beers in general.

In general, collaborations are a great way for beer makers to get together with different points of view and create something that either may not have made on their own. Getting together for a collaboration also might just be an excuse to make something completely wacky but why not if the resulting product turns out well?

Collaborations are also a great way to promote homebrewing and an awesome prize for homebrewers. The bottle of Nøgne Ø Andrímnir Barley Wine Ale was actually brewed by the winner of a homebrew competition at the Nøgne Ø brewery. More well known is the Sam Adams Longshot American Homebrew Contest, where, again, the winners of the competition get to brew their winning beer at Sam Adams to be later sold in stores. There is even a category of the Great American Beer Festival specifically for this type of collaboration, Pro-Am. Finally, some even local breweries have regulars that have a good relationship with the owner or head brewr to the point where they are invited to collaborate and brew in the brewery. Since I never-ever-ever plan on owning my own brewery, this type of homebrewer-professional collaboration is very appealing given that this would be the only way I could ever brew “like a pro” and collaborate with a brewery.

And then there are collaborators that are in a unique category of there own like Mikkeller. Mikkeller isn’t a traditional brewery, it’s Danish brewer, Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, who goes around Europe and the United States brewing and collaborating at other breweries to produce a very unique line of beer.

It’s also a great marketing vehicle from a few perspectives. First, it gets out the name of several breweries for one release. You may have heard of Stone Brewing of San Deigo but maybe not Nøgne Ø of Denmark. Next, these collaborations are usually able to brew something a little out of the ordinary (even more so than usual) and still manage to sell the product. By having a limited release breweries can use word-of-mouth marketing and a necessarily scarce product to produce demand that well exceeds supply. In most cases this does not result in higher prices but some stores do take advantage of the “uniqueness” of the beer to hike the rates. This starts to bring us to the dark side of collaborations and special release beer in general. Certain beer becomes so rare that collectors must grab up every bottle they can find at the determent of the beer community at large. During SF Beer Week somebody sent me a picture of some douchebag who posted a picture boasting how much Pliny the Younger he hoarded. Limited edition beers can also lead you on a journey (annoying or enlightening) to new beer stores to find what you’re looking for.

How do you feel about collaboration beer?

Mikkeller BrewDog Devine Rebel Review

David Jensen — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:00:13 +0000

Devine Rebel is an “extreme” collaboration beer between Mikkeller (Mikkel Borg Bjergsø) of Denmark and BrewDog of Scotland. This is an interesting beer that where one-quarter of the beer has been aged in oak Seyside Scottish whiskey barrels. It was also brewed using a single hop variety and both an ale yeast and a champagne yeast, likely to boost the beer up to 12% alcohol by volume.

Mikkeller considers himself to be a “gypsy brewer” in so much as Mikkeller is a one man operation that only produces collaboration beers with breweries in Europe and the United States. It’s actually a quite interesting idea for a beer company.

Brew Dog is famous and controversial for creating the first 32% supposed beer, called Tactical Nuclear Penguin, but it is more like an ice-beer-brandy concoction. My opinion is that is is both beer and brandy.

Brew Dog has a blog post that explains just a little bit of the background of Devin Rebel.

Date Reviewed. April 28, 2010

Where I Found It. Healthy Spirits in San Francisco, CA.

Serving Type. 11.2 oz bottle into a tulip glass.

Appearance. Devine Rebel is slightly hazy with beer-bottle-brown color. The combination makes the beer look a bit muddy. It’s not the blue background in the photos, it does look muddy. The head is tan and has poor head retention.

Smell. This beer has a malty nose with noticeable (but not in your face) Scotch and woody aromas. The maltiness also has a brown sugar, molasses, and vanilla quality to it. As the beer gets closer to cellar temperature the scotch notes come out more. Despite the high alcohol content, this beer does not have a strong pure-booze smell to it, just the Scotch notes.

Taste. Devine Rebel reminds me of a strong, woody, barley-wine. There is plenty of roasted malt sweetness combined with a balance of hop bitterness that makes the sweetness a bit like molasses. When combined with the woody and Scotch flavors, it adds an interesting complexity. There is also hint of dried fruit like dates. This beer definitely has a boozy astringency to it from the alcohol content, which was masked in the aroma. Devine Rebel is a strong beer with bold flavors that are interesting but also sometimes rarely clash. The most interesting aspect of this beer is the noticeable Scotch flavors, which are just the perfect amount. Not too overwhelming and so faint you barely would know it was there.

Mouthfeel. The mouthfeel of this beer is thick and full-bodied with low carbonation with a bit of tannins.

Drinkability. This is a strong, boozy, barley-wine-esque beer with some interesting flavors of Scotch whiskey barrels. Maybe it is the alcohol but my first impressions were not as good as my final impression of the beer. If you see it in the store, it might be worth picking up a bottle but it is not worth calling around to see who carries it or still has a bottle left on the shelf.

Rating. My ratings below are on a five point scale with five being the best score.

Appearance (20%): 3.0
Smell (20%): 4.0
Taste (40%): 4.0
Mouthfeel (10%): 3.5
Drinkability (10%): 3.5
Overall: 3.7

Information

Style: Barley-wine
Brewery: Mikkeller and Brew Dog
Alcohol by volume: 12.1%
Hops: a single variety
Other ingredients: ale yeast and champagne yeast.
Beer Advocate rating: 3.94 (as of April 28, 2010)

Caption on the Bottle

The following caption appears on the side of the bottle:

In a rock ‘n roll collaboration, 2 of Europe’s most extreme. experimental brewers have combined forces, talents and ideas to produce this innovative ale.

Uniting inspiration, ingredients and people form around the world this beer was brewed and aged at BrewDog in Scotland.

This rebellious beer is partially aged in oak Speyside whiskey barrels and partially aged in stainless steel, combines and ale yeast and a champagne yeast and showcase a single hop variety.

Other Reviews

Other

This is Day 1 of 47 Days of Beer 47, in which I plan to post 47 articles in 47 days. This year, 2010, I launched this idea on April 28 but in 2011 I’ll plan to start on April 7 also known as 4/7.