As we closed the June/July 2017 issue, I sat in a huge ballroom in Washington, D.C. with thousands of professional brewers as we listened to brewing-industry legend Dick Cantwell deliver a powerful keynote address at the annual Craft Brewers Conference. He touched on a number of subjects, but the one that resonated with me the most was his call to not lose that core pillar of the craft-beer movement—the collegial sharing and mutual empowerment that has been the primary driver of success for the entire craft-beer category.
This is the reason that many of us love brewing—while the pursuit of mastery is valuable on its own terms, the reward of learning from peers and engaging in the social act of brewing together (whether on a homebrew scale with friends in your garage or at a professional scale while collaborating with another commercial brewery) is one thing that makes craft beer unique and special. And it’s something that great brewers never cease doing, no matter how many awards they might accrue or how many people line up for their releases.
The Colorado Brewers Guild’s Collabfest is a manifestation of that ideal and one of my favorite festivals of the year. A few months ago, we drank some beers with Mark Hastings of Überbrew, who you might remember from their showstopping win of four medals and “small brewer of the year” accolades at last year’s Great American Beer Festival. Mark (who was in town to brew several collaborations for the festival) said something that has stuck with me ever since—that he loves to brew collab beers because he loves to learn from the brewers he brews with. That spirit of humility, dedication to nonstop learning, and desire for real social connection through the practice of brewing with peers is what makes craft beer so exceptional. This doesn’t happen in other industries, and it’s a core value that we have to fight for and protect.