Our second collaboration release this month was brewed in April 2015 with our friends Will Meyers and Logan Plant. Will is the Brewmaster of Cambridge Brewing Company in Massachusetts and Logan the founder of London’s Beavertown Brewery making this a brew day of international effort and inspiration!
But how did an international 3-way collaboration make it’s way to little old Eugene? In April of 2015 Portland was hosting the Craft Brewers Conference; an event where 11,000+ brewing industry employees descended on the state for a week. Our former Brewmaster Matt Van Wyk had known Will for a number years from different industry events spanning the country. Will was traveling to Oregon for the conference and asked if we would like to do a collaboration. At the same time Logan was on a cross country trip collaborating with breweries at different stops along the way . One of Beavertown’s employees at the time, Jeremy Luz, just happened to be from Eugene and suggested that Logan attempt to set up a collaboration with us in his home town. We were ecstatic at the possibility of hosting a collaboration, and just like that our little 3-way brew day was born.
Once the players were set, we needed to decide on a style to brew. Often with collaborations the style chosen represents the forte of one if not all of the brewers. All three breweries have an affinity for barrel-aging, especially wild beers, so after much deliberation the style of Barrel-aged Brettanomyces Pale Ale was chosen and a recipe developed. The thought with the beer was to brew a low bitterness, but high hop flavored and aroma beer. We would ferment the beer with house yeast strain, before moving the beer to barrels with a mixed culture of Brettanomyces. After a number of months in the barrel the beer would be blended and dry-hopped to compliment yeast profile developed during the time in the barrel. The hops chosen for the initial brew day were a mix of Old World traditional varietals along with New World high aroma hops. The team decided to leave the dry hop varieties as an open discussion until blending. We used a mix of two Brett strains to drive a funky and fruity profile in the beer.
We had an awesome brew day, including a Beavertown/Cambridge tap takeover at our Public House and at the Bier Stein all in one night. We said goodbye to our friends and so began the long wait till maturity.
After eight months we began to taste through the six wine barrels filled with our collaboration beer. Each one unique in it’s own way, but with a common thread in the aroma of each barrels. It was time to blend our beer. We still needed to decided on the dry-hops that we were going to use. We deliberated and consulted Will and Logan and we decided to go with a heavy dosage of Nelson Sauvin and Mandarina Bavaria.
The beer turned out so well that we decided to bottle it. We naturally conditioned the beer in 750ml capped champagne bottles. It was our first time using such bottles, but we saw it as a great opportunity with the impending new logo release. This was to be the first beer release in our Vintage program. With bottle conditioning you must wait until the beer tells you it is ready. This beer has been conditioning in the bottle for nearly 5 months and is now ready for your enjoyment.
So tonight at 6pm we’ll be releasing Three Chords and the Truth on draft and in bottles. 750ml capped bottles will be $25/bottle. There will be no limit on bottles, however only about 50 cases of this beer was produced. We hope you enjoy and look forward to seeing everyone at the release and in the pub over the next few weeks to try this awesome collaboration beer
