Collaborations are common in the friendly craft beer world, where like-minded brewers often team up to meld brains over the kettle for a day. Sometimes, brewers journey cross-town or even cross-state for such projects with the results eventually being tapped at both brewers’ home pubs. Typically, whoever owns the collaboration brewing system and sells the beer sets the rules. Also, when professional brewers collaborate with other professional brewers, the conversations lean toward technical details. When professional brewers collaborate with civilians, the brewing room chatter tends to be more about big ideas and work up something possible. Yesterday, Peaks and Pints collaborated on a second beer with Wingman Brewers of Tacoma. In three weeks, S’mores Porter will be introduced to the world. In the meantime, our beer flight today center on collaborations — professional and civilian participants — that we have titled Craft Beer Crosscut 7.8.17: A Flight of Collaborations.
Wingman Perfect Proctor Porter
6.1% ABV
Wingman Brewers and Peaks and Pints first collaborated on the Perfect Proctor Porter, which hit our Western red cedar tap log on our opening day, Nov. 1, 2016.It’s a slight deviation of Bert Grant’s famous Yakima Brewing & Malting Co. Grant’s Perfect Porter. We skipped the Scottish peated malt and added a whole vanilla bean plus Cascade hops for bittering. Our version of the porter, perfect really, pours smooth with roast, slight hop and mellow vanilla notes.
Ecliptic Star Destroyer
8% ABV, 39 IBU
Part of Ecliptic Brewing’s Cosmic Collaboration Series, this craft beer emerges from the wormhole as an “Imperial Darkside Lager,” or schwarzbier if you want to get technical. In keeping with Ecliptic’s space tendencies, the beer was ultimately called Star Destroyer, thanks to Van Havig of fellow Portland, Oregon craft brewery Gigantic Brewing who agreed to collaborate on the brew only if it carried the name of the wedge-shaped capital ship of Star Wars fame. Anyway, this beer attacks with a big toast and light toffee nose. The flavor is Munich malts, some caramel, toffee, sweet fruit, a bit of coffee and bitter dark chocolate.
Three Magnets Art Chantry Imperial Bitter
8.2% ABV, 40 IBU
Three Magnets Brewing Co. honors Olympia’s notable indie music scene with craft beers named after, and brewed by, key players in Olympia’s indie music scene, such as band 764-HERO, prolific graphic artist Art Chantry, YoYo Records, and Diana Arens, former producer of the radio show Free Things Are Cool at KAOS Olympia Community Radio and audio engineer at Dub Narcotic and YoYo Records. For today’s beer flight we chose to highlight the former art director at The Rocket, the bible of Seattle’s music scene of the ’80s and ’90s. Art Chantry provided the inspiration and artwork for Three Magnet’s Imperial Bitter. The collaboration ended with caramel and earthy notes cutting and pasting the front and middle of the tongue before a wave on bitterness is stapled to a telephone pole.
Gigantic Axes Of Evil
6% ABV
Three Floyds Brewing out of Munster, Indiana, traveled to Gigantic Brewing in Portland, Oregon, to brew Axes Of Evil, an English pale ale and beer number three in Gigantic’s Endless Series of limited edition artist and artisan beers. According to Axes Of Evil hype, “Gigantic and Three Floyds Unleash this true weapon of mass distraction. Citrus, floral and tropical hoppiness lead to full malt flavor from proper English malt, kilned over Welsh coal. Brewed for those of us that live and die in the timbers army and Section 8.” Indeed. The Evil hits the tongue with medium sweet peachy honey, toasted caramel and medium spicy herbal, woody and fruity hop.
Drew Curtis/Wil Wheaton/Greg Koch Stone Farking Wheaton wOOtstout
13% ABV, 65 IBU
The w00t is back. This year marks the fifth year Stone Brewing’s collaborative imperial stout hits the street. Stone Farking Wheaton W00tstout 2017, a 13 percent ABV imperial stout brewed with rye, wheat malt and pecans before being partially aged in Kentucky bourbon barrels, is a collaboration between actor Wil Wheaton, Fark.com creator Drew Curtis and Stone CEO Greg Koch. It’s named after Wheaton’s annual festival celebrating cross-genre geekdom w00tstock. Expect raisins, coffee and roasted malt flavors with a spicy finish. The booze is evident but for the ABV it goes down easy. Woot! Woot! (Note: Peaks and Pints offers a 3-ounce pour of wOOtstout compared to 5-ounce pours of the others due to ABV and price.)
