Still Here Brewing Collective
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How do you highlight the things that you care about? That’s the question from Zuni Street Brewing’s lead brewer, Riley O’Connor, who is heading up a new brewing project called Still Here, a collaborative effort from over a dozen Denver-area breweries. The collective’s first beer, Saison, will be released on Saturday, January 10.
Most breweries are stuck selling beers that are popular. Unlike chefs, who can make one-off specials, brewers are usually forced to brew batches based on the size of their equipment. A typical 10-barrel brewing system means that the brewery produces twenty half-barrel kegs of beer per batch — beer that it needs to sell within a few months in order to make the endeavor profitable. For less popular styles of beer, being confident in only selling two to three kegs isn’t enough to justify brewing up a batch. Still Here aims to capture the passion for some of these lesser-known styles while adding something new and fun to the local beer scene.
“I want there to be options outside of the prototypical stuff that you see on a menu,” says O’Connor. “The idea is, all these chefy, brilliant, intelligent people in the beer community are still here, and the line of products that we’re hopefully putting out on the regular, those styles are still here. And finally, due to the limited nature of the volume that each beer will have, get it while it’s still here.”
Still Here partnered with Chris Schooley from Troubadour Maltings to use a pilsner malt grown by Eric Pfannenstiel at Rocky Mountain Hay Farms. Both unmalted and malted India Jammu wheat was provided by Boulder’s Dry Storage. Matthew Peetz of Propagate Labs also joined the project, providing a blended saison strain comprising two famed Belgian breweries, as well as a French brewery.
Still Here Brewing Collective
“The beer is a mosaic of Colorado farmers, scientists, brewers and nerds who just care,” says O’Connor. It can be described as bone-dry, with a bold, expressive yeast that throws off flavors of strawberry, bubble gum and light pepper. It’s hopped with Saaz hops, lending a spicy, earthy depth beyond the yeast-forward expression.
O’Connor, along with Seedstock Brewery co-owner Adam McIlvenna, was discussing the idea of a saison. “I said that it’d be nice to make beers that we miss,” says McIlvenna. “We asked, who else do you think would want to make a saison? Then it snowballed.”
The two decided to reach out to other breweries to see who might be interested in joining. “Everyone kept saying yes,” O’Connor recalls. “Nobody said no.” The idea quickly grew, and “I was like, oh no, I’m going to have to do a double batch of this beer.”
Saison will be released on January 10 at Barquentine Brewing, Los Dos Potrillos Cervecería, Barrels & Bottles Brewery, Mad Macks Brewing, Black Shirt Brewing, Milieu Fermentation, Broken Hops Brewing, Prost Brewing, Odell Brewing, Chain Reaction Brewing, Seedstock Brewery, Cheluna Brewing, the Empourium Brewing, Coda Brewing, Westfax Brewing, Full Frame Beer and Zuni Street Brewing.
When O’Connor initially got into beer, he says that there was so much discovery in the scene. “It was amazing,” he recalls. “How do we as curators, as nerds, provide that today?” The group talked over beers at Zuni Street and settled on the ingredients and process.
“Matthew brought us some nice saison to share, and we just passed the empty bottle around, and it was literally person by person, sharing what they would like to see in a saison,” says McIlvenna. “It was impressive sitting with twenty people from the craft brewery world, collectively throwing out thoughts. It came together a lot more simply than I would’ve ever thought.”
While the stakes might not be that high for a single brewery to sell a keg or two of the beer, O’Connor felt an immense pressure to make a beer that represented everyone. “It’s a massive risk for me. I want the beer to be really good,” he says.
As for future batches, both O’Connor and McIlvenna hope that this can become a quarterly project. The next batch will be brewed outside of Zuni Street, at another brewery in the collective. “There are so many cool, smart breweries involved,” says O’Connor. He also hopes for even more breweries to join the group. “If you’re a brewer reading this, reach out.”
