A Never-Done-Before Collaboration

Last year, the Great American Beer Festival added another category to its competition: a juicy, hazy pale ale.

This year, the three winners from 2018 teamed up to make a collaborative version in the same category.

When Jacob Talley from Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s Tin Roof (first place) realized that the breweries that won silver and bronze in the competition, Kings Brewing Company (from Rancho Cucamonga, California) and Fiction (located in Denver) respectively, would likely be at 2019’s Craft Brewers Conference, he reached out to ask if they’d want to do a collaborative beer.

“A collaboration like this, to my knowledge, had not been done before, so I also saw a tremendous opportunity to be innovative and not ‘just another collaboration,’” Talley said.

Both breweries were in favor of the project, so the three teamed up this year at CBC to write the recipe. Kings Brewing actually flew out to the convention in Denver just to work on the beer with Fiction and Tin Roof.

“We all sat down over a few beers and talked grain, yeast, hops, processes and how each brewery did things. Then we took all those ideas we had on paper and made them into one recipe,” said Jeremiah Cooper of Kings Brewing.

As of now, Fiction is the only brewery brewing Electrum Bronze, and distribution is limited to the Denver metro area. The cans will be available for about a month.

Creating the beer was simple, Fiction’s Ryan Kilpatrick said. “Honestly, it was just a meeting of the minds,” he said. “Each brewery brought some beers to sample, we tasted them, talked about the way each of us do things and the final recipe and process just came together organically.”

With 16-ounce cans becoming the preferred size for this style of beer, the breweries decided to use a larger can to meet consumers’ needs. Fiction produces all of its cans at this size, regardless of style.

Even though distribution is limited to Fiction’s Denver market, Kilpatrick believes simply working with the other breweries will help reach new consumers.

“We are fortunate to reach new customers every time we package a beer simply because of our small footprint,” he said. “A beer of this caliber will likely reach more new customers than usual due to the amazing other breweries we were able to work with.”

Christa Kilpatrick, co-owner of Fiction, said the beer is being marketed on all of Fiction’s social media platforms, as well as through press releases.

“For this release, we invited beer media to come taste the beer prior to release on Saturday,” she said. “And, to hit a wider (less local) focused audience, we post can releases on Craftbeer.com.”

From past collaborations with Fiction, customers have sought out other out-of-state breweries and Kilpatrick expects the same will happen as a result of this collaboration with Tin Roof and Kings.