Collaboration beers are a hallmark of craft brewing.
Take two or more talented brewers from potentially competing breweries, bring them together to brainstorm ideas and combine their talents, and, more often than not, we—the drinking public—are treated to an inventive new taste sensation that likely would not have arisen from any single brewer’s kettle. Everyone wins.
Brewers “probably get the most out of it, in a lot of ways,” says New Belgium spokesman Bryan Simpson. “In the sense that there’s a mutual exchange of ideas and a flourish of creativity that comes from both parties bringing their strong suits. You often get a one-plus-one-equals-three type equation out of that.”
New Belgium has released numerous collaboration beers with brewers large and small over time—even several collaborations with ice-cream maker Ben & Jerry’s. The latest, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ale, was released in late October.
Beyond providing a reason for brewers who admire each other’s work to hang out and brew together, however, collaboration beers are also an excellent opportunity to tout an affinity with buzzed-about brands and expand each brewery’s marketing reach.
“I do think there are great opportunities, from a brand perspective, to cross-pollinate your audiences,” Simpson says. “Working with smaller breweries that are up-and-coming is certainly a lot of fun. Sure, there’s the New Belgium bandwidth and halo effect, but there’s also a halo effect of being able to work with innovative brewers who are young to the industry and are bringing new things to the fold. We learn as much from our partners as they would ever learn from us.”
To celebrate its 25th anniversary this year, New Belgium partnered with several traditional Belgian brewers for beers in its Lips of Faith series (including De Koninck Brewery in Antwerp and Hof Ten Dormaal in Tildonk), which provided an opportunity for the brewery to celebrate its brewing roots—and enjoy a few trips to Belgium. Also this year, the brewery released special Fat Tire & Friends CollaBEERation 12-packs that saw Allagash, Rhinegeist, Avery, Hopworks (pictured above for a different collaboration—the Organic Peach IPA “B-Side”), and Firestone Walker putting their own spin on New Belgium’s signature Fat Tire Amber Ale.
“An old-school marketer might be like, ‘you don’t mess with your flagship,’ but that’s the beauty of our industry. You can tinker and play with just about everything. Things can’t be so sacrosanct that you can’t mess with them from time to time just for fun,” Simpson says. “A lot of times it just comes down to having fun. It’s really less strategic than people assume.”
Sometimes collaboration projects even stem from a chance meeting, as was the case with a collaboration beer the brewery made with the band Clutch.
The way Simpsons tells it, Brewer Eric Salazar was at a sandwich shop in Fort Collins when the band walked in. Salazar, who is a huge fan, recognized the band and asked lead singer Neil Fallon what brought them to town.
“He said, ‘Well, we came to tour New Belgium, but they’re closed today,’” Simpson says, “And Eric was like ‘I can give you a tour of New Belgium,’ so he brought them down here, showed them around, and the two of them started up a kind of bromance.”
One thing led to another, and before long, the band was back at New Belgium to brew a collaboration beer with Salazar called Clutch Dark Sour Ale.
“They created a beer that’s really reflective of their sound, basically a wood-beer stout with some sour elements to it. It’s a really dark, heavy beer,” Simpson says. “It’s cool when you can manifest one art form in another.”