With Fingers Crossed, Collaboration Fest Plans an April Return

Scheduling an indoor beer festival right now is a bit of a risk, but for the nonprofit Colorado Brewers Guild, it’s one worth taking, especially when it comes to Collaboration Fest. Tickets for the event, which will hopefully take place on April 2, at the Fillmore Auditorium, went on sale January 28.

The festival, a favorite of both beer fans and breweries alike, had to be canceled last-minute in 2020 due to the pandemic, and never got off the ground in 2021 for the same reason.

“There is definitely some caution around it, and we have been watching case rates and reading up on projections and working closely with the Fillmore,” says Guild director Shawnee Adelson. “Overall, breweries are excited about it … and looking forward to celebrating together.”

To comply with current Denver regulations – and to make people feel more comfortable – there will be a vaccination requirement for attendees. But that also means they won’t have to wear masks inside, which certainly makes it a lot easier to drink beer. And while there haven’t been many indoor beer fests in the last two years for obvious reasons, music venues like the Fillmore have been successfully hosting vaccine-required, mask-free shows for a while, Adelson points out.

“This will be a first for a lot of people going back to a beer festival,” she says.

Collab Fest was founded in 2014 as a way to get breweries together to make interesting, unusual or one-off beers that celebrate the community, camaraderie and creativity within the craft beer industry. Over the intervening years, many breweries have picked up the mantle of collaboration, and joint-effort beers can now be found in abundance year-round.

“There are more collabs regularly, but for our event, many of our members are really thoughtful in their collaborations, knowing that the festival is there to celebrate them and to celebrate what is so great about our industry,” Adelson says. “Some breweries don’t do it often, and it spurs them to get together and do something unique or to think differently about it.”

To kick things off, the Guild’s board of directors gathered in late January at Barrels & Bottles Brewery in Golden to join in the brewing of a lager that will be served on April 2.

Other tentative collaborations so far include a schwarzbier from Seedstock and Prost; a beer from the Guild and Julia Herz of the American Homebrewers Association; a beer from Ursula and Verboten; a joint effort by Jagged Mountain, MobCraft, Woods Boss and Spangalang; a big beer from Burns and River North Brewery; and an ice cream-themed offering from Weldwerks, Odell and Little Man Ice Cream.

Many more collabs will be announced in the coming weeks, although the total number may be slightly less than it has been in the past, so right around one hundred beers, Adelson says.

Collaboration Fest takes place Saturday, April 2 from 2 to 6 p.m. (early entry begins at 2 p.m. and general admission begins at 3 p.m.), at the Fillmore Auditorium, 1510 Clarkson Street. Tickets are $65 for general admission at 3 p.m. and $85 for early entry at 2 p.m. Find them at LiveNation.com.