Buffalo's Collabeeration Fest stands as one of the most unique events around
Buffalo's Collabeeration Fest stands as one of the most unique events around
Fest features beers devised and brewed by Buffalo Beer Geeks group and partnering breweries
Saturday’s main event at the Powerhouse at Buffalo Color Park was one to remember and it didn’t even need any unneeded cameos from over-the-hill legends. (Sorry, still a bit salty about that Wrestlemania main event last week.)
The Collabeeration Fest, organized by a group of adventurous nerds from the Buffalo Beer Geeks Facebook group, was one of the most unique and memorable beer events I’ve ever attended. It’s billed as a “festival made for beer geeks — by beer geeks.” And it certainly lived up to that promise.
The premise: Members of the Beer Geeks community work with partnering breweries to come up with a beer recipe, name, and then brew it. This year, 48 breweries from across western New York participated. (There was even one participant from Canada, Toronto’s excellent Blood Brothers Brewing.) The result — some of the weirdest, most irreverent, and memorable local beers you’ll ever encounter.
After sampling the collabs, attendees were encouraged to vote for their favorites. The winning brewery receives a championship belt, which is fitting, since this year’s theme was wrestling. It led to some really, really hilariously named beers like Strangebird’s D-Von, Get the Tables, a barrel-fermented saison, Blood Brother’s Stone Fruit Steve Austin, a cherry session sour, and Mystic Hills Hulk Hoganweissen.
On top of the inventive collabs, Collabeeration featured an absolutely batty VIP area, where you could sample beers from an incredible array of buzz-worthy breweries like ill will (look at that goofy banana, vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, pineapple pastry sour with whip cream and a cherry on top pictured above), CLAG, Human Robot, Side Project, Mortalis, Counterpart, Fidens, whatever goodies the Buffalo Barrel Project boys brought, and Messorem. You coulda spent your entire fest in the VIP area and left really happy. The array of beers was incredible — stuff I’ve only ever read about. Massive kudos to the organizers there.
Here are my highlights (outside of the nutty VIP selections where you could have a Side Project saison and follow it up with a Fidens triple IPA):
Noble Shepherd Brewery (Bristol) Spanish Announce Table: With unquestionably the greatest setup at the fest (the championship belt at the top of the ladder, the broken table in the foreground), this pineapple churro sour worked way better than it shoulda. It was surprisingly balanced and incredibly tasty. Everyone knows, someone is guaranteed to go through the Spanish announce table at every pay-per-view. This is the beer that earned my vote for the best at the fest.
Wayland Brewing (Orchard Park) Parts Unknown Thai gose: This brewery continues to be one of my favorites in the region. And for the fest, the Nerds and Wayland released a sour wheat beer with calamansi, ginger, lime leaf, coriander, and salt. This one was incredibly refreshing and beautifully balanced.
Wild East Brewing (Brooklyn) Contour Interval: Sure, this wasn’t a collab and it wasn’t in the VIP area, but I love Wild East. And its canned foeder-aged mixed fermentation solera saison was just a treat. It’s one of those beers that I would gladly drink all the time. Lightly funky, a touch woody, and super refreshing and zippy.
Eli Fish Brewing (Batavia): Head brewer Adam Burnett just kept putting barrel-aged beers into my glass and they were all exceedingly excellent. No other place in WNY utilizes such a wide range of different barrels and showcases the patience this place demonstrates.
Big Ditch Brewing (Buffalo) Purple Nurple: I am not sure, still, if this one of the best I had yesterday (not in a bad way by any means). But it certainly stands as one of the most memorable and interesting. Big Ditch dropped a hard bubble tea with jasmine, taro, and passion fruit. I’ve certainly never had anything like it.
Heroes Brewing (Rochester) Macho Mango Randy Savage: Oh yeah. Heroes dropped an imperial cream ale with mango and vanilla, and it ruled.
Rochester Real Beer Expo approaches!
Just a friendly reminder, you should pick up your ticket to the upcoming Rochester Real Beer Expo. I’ve booked 86 breweries for this edition, including an increased focus on local and regional spots. I am very, very excited to showcase some of these spots and see what they cook up for the event. VIP tickets are moving briskly and general admission will certainly follow as we move closer to the big day.
(We just picked out the VIP glassware and she’s a beaut.)
This year’s event takes place on Saturday, June 8, at Innovative Field in downtown Rochester. Hope to see you there!
Big Ditch and Radio Social team for beer dinner
Two of my favorites are teaming up for a scrumptious beer dinner later this month. Buffalo’s Big Ditch Brewing will bring some of its best beers and those’ll be paired with some wildly imaginative dishes at one of my favorite Rochester spots, Radio Social. The six-course meal will happen at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 25.
Tickets are available here: https://www.exploretock.com/radio-social/event/476476/big-ditch-big-beer-dinner. The menu can be reviewed here: https://twitter.com/WillCleveland13/status/1778906615447458102.