Love at first sight

“The idea was that three of them would do malts, three of them would do adjuncts, one would pick a barrel to age it in, and one would do a twist, to flip the whole thing on the head,” says Lee. “Andy from Elusive brewing got that one, and threw in the idea of making the beer hot honey inspired, so that's how we ended up with a Texas BBQ Export Stout.” All breweries weren’t physically present to brew the beer on-site at Brew York, but worked on the recipe together virtually, and all came together to enjoy their magnum opus at the party. 

This particularly chaotic — albeit brilliant — way to collaborate is evidence of how free-form collaboration can be within craft beer. However, this brief insight into how the sausage gets made begs questions as to just how two breweries divide the task of designing a recipe, and make decisions together. Obviously, this will differ on a case-by-case basis, but Lee says there are some common threads to all the best collabs he’s been a part of. 

“The best collaboration experiences are when I get to learn something, I try something I've not tried before, or we use a new production technique while visiting a brewery that does things in an entirely different way, or who brew particular styles in a way that you think are better than how you do them. As you will know, craft beer is a very open industry, and we're very good at sharing. I can't think of a collab where I haven't come back with at least one thing I want to change here.” A shining example of which unfolds right before my eyes, as we veer back towards discussion of the DDH IPA that the two breweries have collaborated on most recently. 

“I think when you're designing a hazy pale these days, there's a relatively accepted approach to the construction of the grist recipe,” Lee begins. “You’re going to use oats, you’re going to use wheat as well as base malt, you’re sometimes going to be using things to encourage the level of sweetness like dextrin malt, or chit malt, which is like unprocessed barley. So that bit kind of writes itself. And then it was about hop selection — in this case, we chose Citra and Idaho 7 — and then how we use those hops. We've adopted a house yeast, London Fog, which is brilliant for the production of these types of styles; it’s very good at biotransforming and really getting as much bang for your buck out of those hops as possible.”

Geoffrey adds that, until 2023, London Fog was also Amundsen’s hazy house yeast, though it recently transitioned to using a dry variety of the strain, as opposed to the wet version that Brew York uses. “We now work with another yeast producer called AEB, and they have started to make a dry version of London Fog,” says Geoffrey, which catches Lee’s attention. “We have started using the dry version because we don't crop yeast [reuse yeast] in our brewery, so for us, it makes more sense to have dry stains readily available instead of wet strains, which need to be used within a certain amount of time. We’ve been very happy with the cross over. Anyway, in theory, the yeast we use is another similar thing between us.”

Lee is hot on the heels of his comment. “That’s really interesting,” he begins. “London Fog — until what Jeff was just talking about there — was only available as a wet strain, and you’d be getting it from the likes of White Labs, and it's very expensive. If you’re not repitching it, then it's incredibly expensive. So yeah, we do repitch, and because it's a strain of English origin, as the name suggests, it's also really good for cask beer production. So we use it in those styles, we use it in our hazy beer, and we use it for stouts unless we’re making something really strong, because it’s not very alcohol tolerant.” 

This minor exchange is a drop in the ocean of resources and knowledge exchanged between Amundsen and Brew York over the years, but it nonetheless provides a shining example of craft brewing in action. When asked to recall something each brewery has learned from the other, over the years, Lee is quick to say that Amundsen’s team structure was a real inspiration for Brew York. Amundsen famously runs a sizable brewery, and produces a staggering volume of beer with a team of just eight people. 

“When Wayne [Smith, co-founder] and I came across to Norway, for a previous collaboration, we were stunned to see how small the team was,” Lee says. “I remember Geoff telling us that the reason he's able to do that is because everybody is skilled to do pretty much everything. Prior to our visit, we had a kind of compartmentalised team, where people brew, people do packaging, or people work in the cellar. Whereas since our time in Norway, we have begun to cross-skill the whole team, so we have a lot of people who can brew, a lot of people who can do packaging, and people move around the business. I think you get the best results out of people when they're experiencing variety, because they know a lot more about the end-to-end process.”

For all Amundsen is a little older than Brew York, and therefore a little more experienced, the two converse as friends, and as peers, without hierarchy and without pretence. “This is why I love our community so much,” says Geoffrey. “People care and people help each other and people are friendly. We’ve always been so well received by breweries in the UK, and so I assume it’s the same as it is here in Norway. We still have that culture whereby smaller breweries call us to ask for help, and we still get in touch with breweries that are bigger than us, if we’re ever wondering about something. So it's really a very, very nice community.”

Before any of us know it, Geoffrey is getting in touch with a friend of a friend to see if he can help Lee source a palletising robot, and I wrap up the call to give the old friends some privacy. I am left with the feeling of having been enveloped in a bear hug, or at least crushed between these two friends, reaching for each other. In either instance, the residual sentiment remains the same; that I had just witnessed care and comradery, exchanged across time and space, that offered solace and shelter from the shitstorm that is the outside world.