The Must-Try Beers You'll Find at Collaboration Fest This Saturday

Collaboration Fest will be back for the eighth time on Saturday, March 25. The Colorado Brewers Guild-hosted event will take place at a new venue this year, the Westin Westminster. With 125 beers pouring at the fest, and 175 breweries involved, there is a great deal of creativity and a whole lot of fun beer to explore.

Beer festivals over the last handful of years, particularly larger festivals featuring so many well-known breweries, are usually dominated by IPAs and barrel aged stouts. Collaboration Fest is different, and while you’ll find enough IPA and barrel-aged beer to satisfy that craving, the fest has quite a bit of variety — far more than you’d expect at a festival.

Uncommon-ingredient beers have become a staple for the festival, and there is no shortage of them this year. 6 and 40 Brewery teamed up with a slew of other Lakewood breweries, including WestFax Brewing, Landlocked Ales, Old 121 Brewhouse, Green Mountain Beer and Great Frontier Brewing, to brew a Sour Patch Kids sour ale. Something Brewery out of Brighton has a pair of interesting fruited beers: a banana cinnamon wafer ale brewed with FlyteCo Brewing, as well as a collaboration with Bull Horn Brewing billed as a dark cherry, almond and yogurt sour.

One of the more elaborate projects at the fest is the collaboration between Boulder neighbors Wild Provisions Beer, Upslope Brewing and Uhl’s Brewing. The hoppy dark lager, named Tank Heist, used wort brewed at Upslope and Uhl’s that was loaded into a tank truck and driven down the street to Wild Provisions, where it was blended while resting in the lagering koelschip before being fermented and lagered. The trio of breweries even made a fun video about the experience.
To many brewers, the event is all about coming together with like-minded friends and brewing up a beer that both breweries are passionate about. That’s the case for Cohesion Brewing and Monday Night Brewing out of Atlanta. The two brewed Dub 12°, a polotmavý ležák, perhaps better known in America as a Czech amber lager.

Cellar West Artisan Ales and La Cumbre Brewing teamed up for Convoy, a Franconian lager, and Burns Family Artisan Ales brewed up a Kölsch with Great Divide Brewing. Burns will be debuting its own Kölsch service the day after Collaboration Fest, and will continue the service every Sunday for the foreseeable future.

Verboten Brewing and Liquid Mechanics Brewing are jumping on the German beer train as well, albeit in a non-traditional yet very intriguing way — by pouring Muncherwein, a barleywine with Munich malt.

Glenwood Canyon Brewing and Craftsman Brew also teamed up for a European-style beer called Bubblenautics, a Polish smoked beer known as a grodziskie.

Collaboration Fest features non-brewing partnerships, too, from the companies that supply the ingredients used in the beers to cause-based sponsors. For example, BURLY Brewing is collaborating with Colorado Beer Guy and Dads of Castle Rock, on DoCR Stout. Dads of Castle Rock is a volunteer organization that supports the local community.
One of the most off-the-wall beers at the fest promises to be the collab between Danico Brewing and Jade Mountain Brewery. The beer is a blend of a hazy double IPA from Danico with a blue sour ale from Jade Mountain that also features pineapple and coconut.

Mushroom beers are in full swing, too. Golden’s Barrels and Bottles Brewery teamed up with Nevada’s Mojave Brewing to add oyster mushrooms from a local grower to an American light lager. Jagged Mountain Brewery was joined by Steeplejack Brewing on a mushroom beer, as well. Shawn Bayer is the brewer at Steeplejack and was previously the assistant brewer at Jagged Mountain. The beer features four grains to go along with lion's mane, turkey tail and other mushrooms.

The final mushroom beer comes from Aurora breweries Six Capital Brewing and Two22 Brew, which used Sorachi Ace hops and shiitake mushrooms along with nori in a German-style base beer.

If you’re still longing for IPAs after all that, don’t worry: There are more than a few being poured at the fest. Novel Strand Brewing teamed up with Colorado’s beer media to brew an unfiltered hoppy beer that features four new experimental hops. And the likes of Cannonball Creek Brewing (with Heritage BBQ and Brewing), Cabin Creek Brewing (with Soulcraft Brewing), Great Divide Brewing (separately, with Boneyard Beer and Dry Dock Brewing) and Sanitas Brewing (with Sunroom Brewing) all have beers to satisfy your hoppy cravings.

Collaboration Fest is always a fun event with a range of creative beers from some of the best brewers around. It's one of the first big festivals of the season and one of the more unique, catering to both the drinker who wants to explore and the one who's looking for something more familiar. Tickets start at $65 and are available online.