Representatives from over a dozen Columbus-area breweries recently teamed up at Four String Brewing Company to create the annual collaboration beer for Columbus Craft Beer Week.
This year’s collaboration is called Confluence, a hazy, New England-style IPA on which local brewers worked together to formulate the recipe.
“People throw out good ideas and out of that comes a melting pot,” said Larry Horwitz, Brewmaster at Four String. “We [at Four String] are getting to be known for brilliant lager beer, and of course we didn’t filter Confluence at all which makes me twitchy a little — and that, I think, is the best, because [collaborating] pushes us to do creative and new things that we wouldn’t do on a regular basis.”
Confluence IPA was brewed with a base of Pilsner malt and Breiss Aromatic malt and hopped with Galaxy, Cascade, Columbus, Centennial, and an experimental new hop called BRU-1 which Horwitz describes as adding “lemon-y and lemongrass notes.”
Participating in the collaboration brew day were representatives from Actual, Brew Brothers, Columbus, Combustion, Elevator, Endeavor, Four String, Grove City, Ill Mannered, Land-Grant, Lineage, Nocterra, North High, Pretentious, Seventh Son and Sideswipe. Additional breweries participated in the recipe development and naming process.
The team brewed 40 barrels, which breaks down to 400 cases of cans and 20 ½ bbl kegs. Six-packs of Confluence have already begun hitting store shelves in advance of Beer Week, and are currently available at eight area Giant Eagle stores as well as Weiland’s, Pace High Carryout and Savor Growl, with more accounts rolling out soon. Artwork for the cans was designed by Land-Grant’s Walt Keys.
“It’s basically a little family reunion when we all get together,” said Horwitz. “Everyone swaps best practices and ideas and talks about the collaboration recipe but also other beer recipes and other ways to manufacture the product that we all love so much. I think that’s the part we all really look forward to.”
Columbus Craft Beer Week runs May 11-19. A full list of events can be found at columbusbeerweek.com/events.
full disclosure: Columbus Craft Beer Week is a client and Confluence is distributed by client Superior Beverage Group
