Earlier this summer, brewers from Utah’s oldest and newest microbreweries began texting each other, dreaming up a new beer.
Nils Imboden of Wasatch Brewery and Jaron Anderson of auxiliary beer (which is slated to open later this year) just needed to be pinged back and forth before deciding what they wanted to do.
“We’re like, ‘Let’s make a cold IPA,'” Anderson said. “I liked the idea of using noble hops with newer hops.” They settled on Hallertau, Mandarin Bavaria, Australian Nectaron and Columbus. “The other it was an African hop, so we used hops from five different continents,” he said.
The result is Cold Rhythm IPA, a German-style beer with an international flavor.
“There’s hops from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Germany, France … so a fantastic hop profile from all over the world,” Imboden said. “It’s very citrusy, very tasty. A little higher on the bitterness scale, so it’s a true IPA. We used German lager yeast.”
That beer is almost ready to pour, and will debut in the second Collab Fest, a volunteer event hosted by the Utah Brewers Guild. The first Collab Fest took place in 2019, said UBG Executive Director Teri Mumm, then the schedule was derailed by COVID-19.
Although they tried to pull it together last year, Mumm said, the brewers were under too much stress with supply chain and staffing issues. “It’s such a super grassroots effort,” he said.
In 2019, he said, the brewers selected their collaborators themselves. This year, “we asked people if they were interested in random partnerships, and most of them were. I said, ‘You can come to us with your partner, or we can just match you up with someone.’
What was fun about his collaboration with Anderson, Imboden said, was that because Wasatch is so old and so big, he could get his hands on hard-to-find ingredients and share them for to this project. “Jaron definitely got excited about this, getting to use hops he’s only read about,” Imboden said.
Anderson agreed, noting that he was particularly excited about how the Nectaron complemented the herbal and citrusy notes of the Old World hops. “[Necaton] has peach and tropical fruit. This is one of the coolest hops on the market right now,” he said. “I said, ‘You got Nectaron? Let’s put it in there!'”
Another fun collaboration, Mumm said, is the Deconstructed Barrel Rye Ale from Kiitos Brewing and Grid City Beer Works, which uses shredded wood from rye whiskey barrels to flavor the beer.
Apex Brewing and the soon-to-open SaltFire Brewing Company, both in South Salt Lake, will debut War Pig Cascadian Dark Ale, which continues SaltFire’s punk- and metal-inspired beer series, which included a dedicated Heavy Metal store beer from Salt Lake City.
Almost every brewery in Utah is participating, Mumm said, 32 in all, including Moab Brewing, which works with Proper, making Mo’Cold IPA; Heber Valley Brewing, which is paired with Vernal Brewing Company, making a HWY 40 Smoked Dunkel; and Zion Brewery, which brews a peach sour with Silver Reef.
The Utah Brewers Guild Collab Fest takes place Saturday, September 17th from 2-7pm at McCarthey Plaza, 154 S. Regent St., Salt Lake City (behind the Eccles Theatre). Many of the beers are small-batch brews and will only be available that day, though Cold Rhythm will be available in the Wasatch for a few weeks after the festival. Tickets are $35 to $60, available at utahbrewersguild.org.
Meanwhile, in Deer Valley…
The same weekend, the Deer Valley Mountain Beer Festival is launched for the first time. It will be Friday and Saturday, September 17 and 18, at Deer Valley Resort in Park City.
Josh Hockman, the resort’s beverage director, said his initial plan was to host a wine festival, but instead of competing with the Park City Food & Wine Classic, he thought maybe the city could use a new unusual beer festival.
“The more we investigated, we realized that some of the older ones [beer] Festivals happened in Salt Lake, but there wasn’t one in Park City,” Hockman said. “That’s when we also made the pivot to do a festival that plays with the local aspect, which we like at Deer Valley, to open it and start it with all the breweries in Utah, to show our love for what they do.”
The inaugural festival features more than a dozen Utah breweries.
One of the participants is Offset Bier, which Hockman said is “a really new little craft brewery here in town. I think they rival some of the best beers in the state.”
Another, Hockman said, “is Park City Brewery, our friends right here in the community.” Another is Ombres, “which, in its day, was called Ombres de pallid. This started in Park City and then was sent to Salt Lake.
In addition to the Park City breweries, Proper, Kiitos, Sliver Reef, Moab, Squatters and Wasatch and SaltFlats are also participating.
Some beer will be on draft, but Hockman said they deliberately asked smaller breweries to pour from cans. “We wanted people to really see it, to show the art of the can or the bottle,” he said. “But hopefully when they go out and buy beer at home, they’ll remember it and say, ‘Oh! I remember that one from Talisman Brewing. It helps support our local breweries.’
Getting to the festival will require a chair lift, as the event is held in the Silver Lake area of Deer Valley. The beer and music garden is located inside Silver Lake at the base of the chairlift. Four bands — Memphis Cool, The Pranksters, Cam Gallagher and the Tasty Soul and Mobius Wave — are scheduled to perform in the beer garden, Hockman said.
The event is designed to be family-friendly and fun for non-drinkers or designated drivers. Once people arrive, Hockman said, they have access to the entire mountain, so they’re not just limited to beer tasting, but can walk and roam the entire resort grounds. There is a children’s area with bounce houses and face painting. Food, provided by Deer Valley Food Service, includes grilled hot dogs, hamburgers, turkey chili and barbecue dishes.
“It’s one of the reasons we’ve dubbed it the ‘Mountain Festival,'” Hockman said. “It’s not just a beer festival. We want to make it a complete experience for the whole family, not just drinkers, but non-drinkers, kids, grandparents, everything.”
The Deer Valley Mountain Beer Festival is Saturday, Sept. 17 and Sunday, Sept. 18, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., at Deer Valley’s Silver Lake Lodge, 7600 Royal St., Park City. Tickets – available at DeerValley.com — are $40 per day or $68 for a two-day pass, and include resort access, plus three tasting tokens per day.
