Another Ska-blogger collaboration

Ska Brewing Co. just can't get enough of us bloggers. The Durango brewery has now invited Westword's Jonathan Shikes, who blogs for the Denver weekly as Beer Man, to brew with them.

Shikes flew down to Durango on Tuesday to brew an imperial Pilsener along with the Ska boys, he says on Westword. Orange Blossom Imperial Pilsner will be put on tap at 27 Old Chicago locations around Colorado.

This is Ska's second collaboration with beer bloggers. A year ago, Ska co-founder Dave Thibodeau invited yours truly and Jeff Hammett, a former Durangoan now in San Diego, to brew with them.

In our collaboration with Ska last year, I brewed a 10-gallon batch of an imperial red ale based on Pinstripe, while Hammett went with a Belgian-American IPA. We tapped the beers at Ska's HQ to cheering throngs.

It sounds like Shikes' batch will be quite a bit larger. I guess Thibodeau wasn't too scarred from his experience working with bloggers.

Cheers to Shikes, and Ska, for another cool blogger-brewer collaboration. It doesn't sound like the beer will be available locally, but I'll let you know if that changes.

Recipe for Ska double red

An alert reader noticed that the recipe for the beer I brewed last winter with Ska Brewing Co. in Durango has been reprinted by Brew Your Own, a homebrewing magazine.

If you're interested in how to brew a double red ale based on Ska's Pinstripe Red Ale, click over. I've posted the recipe on this blog before, but it's been organized in a more coherent fashion by Ska's Bill Graham. Scroll down to the recipe headed "Ska Brewing Company Kingpin Double Red."

I originally named it Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale, but I kind of like the name change.

Ska-blogger collaboration in Zymurgy

The current July/August issue of Zymurgy, the journal of the American Homebrewers Association, includes a column I wrote about my brewing collaboration with Ska Brewing Co.

I covered the project last winter extensively on this website, but it was fun to reach out to some new readers via Zymurgy.

The column is not available online. Zymurgy is sold at Magpie's in downtown Durango, along with homebrew shops and newsstands nationwide.

An archive of all the blog posts I wrote about the project to brew Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale is available here.

It was very cool of Ska to open up their brewery to bloggers like myself and Jeff Hammett (formerly of Beer N Bikes in Durango, now writing at San Diego Beer Blog). Thanks especially to Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen and President Dave Thibodeau, without whom I wouldn't have had any clue.

I hope this project leads to other interesting collaborations between bloggers and brewers.

Beers flow at the Ska-blogger tapping party

We drew a strong turnout for the tapping of Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale and Beer N Bikes Belgian-American IPA on Saturday at Ska Brewing Co. The brewery was packed with eager craft-beer drinkers.

It was the culmination of a project conceived by Ska President Dave Thibodeau. He invited Beer N Bikes blogger Jeff Hammett and I to brew a beer with Ska, from choosing a style to designing a recipe to brewing it on Ska’s 10-gallon pilot system.

The bad news is we had a major carbonation problem at the tapping. The beers became over-carbonated in the kegs, resulting in huge, foamy pours. A lot of good beer went down the drain. However, with a little patience, the bartenders were able to get several pints out of each keg.

I really liked my beer. At 8.4 percent ABV and 58 IBUs, it had a strong citrus, floral hop aroma on top of the malty red base. Several people told me it had a “fruity” taste, no doubt from the hops. It hid its alcohol quite well for an imperial red ale. I’ve had imperial reds that were dull to taste, that lacked a good hop kick. Not Soggy Coaster. The taste was very well balanced between the malt and hops, with an exceedingly clean finish. It was as good as I could have hoped.

Beer N Bikes Belgian-American IPA was very interesting. It had a lot going on, with a good hop presence but also plentiful fruity esters. To my palate, it tasted of banana. It was different than anything I’d had before, but I liked it.

The beers went very quickly due to the foam issue and the turnout. Mine was on tap for only 75 minutes.

The carbonation issue was unfortunate, but stuff happens. Ska head brewer Thomas Larsen explained that when using carbon dioxide to carbonate the beer in kegs, it’s a matter of guesswork as to when it’s done. Obviously, it was on CO2 too long. Ska’s system for larger batches is far more dialed in.

We brewed only 10 gallons of each beer. With Ska’s keg of Soggy Coaster Imperial Red gone, one five-gallon keg remains to do with as I please.

It’s been a great project. Larsen and I brewed a hell of a beer, and I learned a lot along the way.

Ska collaboration beer tapping set for Saturday

Ska Brewing Co. is set to tap my collaboration beer at 5 p.m. this Saturday, Feb. 13. Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale is being transferred from carboys to kegs and put on carbon dioxide ahead of its tapping.

This is the culmination of the brewer-blogger “collabeeration,” as Ska calls it, to design a Ska beer of my own, brew it with their staff and blog about it all the while. As my regular readers know, I chose to brew an imperial red ale based on Ska’s Pinstripe. I figured that none of the four breweries in Durango were making an imperial red, so I ought to.

Jeff Hammett of the Durango blog Beer N Bikes brewed a Belgian-American IPA, which likewise will be tapped Saturday.

Last weekend, Thomas Larsen, head brewer at Ska, and I transferred my beer from a 10-gallon fermenter into carboys, glass vessels (pictured) that resemble supersized growlers. They become quite heavy and slippery when full of beer, and I was terrified of dropping one. If a carboy had shattered and wasted five gallons of my beer, I would have been a sad blogger indeed.

Jeff’s beer went from the carboys to kegs to begin carbonating. I’m looking forward to trying it.

I got a quick taste of Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale during the transfer, really the only opportunity to taste the beer before it lands in kegs. You may feel free to take this with a grain of salt - because it is after all my beer - but I think it’s superb. Soggy Coaster is turning out extremely well, with a big, red malt body, aggressive but not overpowering hopping and a fantastic citrus aroma from dry hopping with Willamettes that perfectly introduces the taste.

Judge for yourself Saturday evening at Ska HQ, 225 Girard Street in Bodo Industrial Park.

Whatever concerns I had about the original gravity being too high, resulting in too boozy of a beer, forget them. I’m proud of the final product (with the caveat that it may change a little in the week since, and with the introduction of carbonation).

I have to give Larsen a lot of credit. He’s done a great job guiding me through the brewing process. Every time I wanted to throttle back and make my beer less exciting, he encouraged me to go the other way, resulting in a distinct and very tasty imperial red ale.

We took a final gravity reading, so for you brewing geeks, here are the stats:

Alcohol by volume: 8.44 percent
International Bitterness Units: 57.5
Original gravity: 20.8 degrees Plato
Final gravity: 5.8 degrees Plato
Calories per pint: 406

I’m thrilled to share my beer with friends, readers and of course Ska’s employees and customers. It’s a little bittersweet, though. I’ll soon have to return to sharing news and opining on other people’s beers rather than brewing my own. And once Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale is gone, it’s gone. I won’t be able to taste it again unless I get into homebrewing (which I’d like to do, providing I can find some space), clone the recipe and brew it myself. I think I'm suffering through the brewing equivalent of post-partum depression.

Dave Thibodeau, president of Ska, deserves a hearty thanks. He conceived of this idea in participatory, blog-based journalism. It was a fairly innovative and trusting move to open a commercial brewery to a blogger, let him brew any kind of beer he wanted, name it and write about the project with no restrictions. Same goes to Larsen, who helped me brew the stuff.

Please come by Ska to support the project. Those hops ain’t free.

More photos from brewing at Ska

When I brewed my collaboration beer last week at Ska Brewing Co., I was graced by the presence of Jerry McBride, a Durango photographer whose skills are way too good to be shooting photos for a beer blog. Nevertheless, here they are:



Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen (lower foreground) explains something about the recipe for my beer, Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale. The brewery keeps a recipe sheet with notes on each batch of beer.



The wort, it boils! We had to wait a while for Ska's 10-gallon pilot system to heat up, but it was worth it to see my recipe in action.



The wort shown immediately after we added a batch of German Tradition hops. It boiled up immediately with a split-pea soup appearance.



Rabbit food? Nope, just hops. A few ounces go a long way.



A portrait of the blogger as a young man.

Dry-hopping Soggy Coaster Imperial Red

I met Thomas Larsen, head brewer at Ska Brewing Co., on Monday to dry-hop my Ska collaboration beer, Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale.

Dry-hopping just means adding hops when fermentation has more or less finished. It doesn't bitter the beer substantially, but it does add some floral hop aroma. Since aroma and taste are so closely linked, I'm hoping it adds a little complexity to the beer. Many pale ales, IPAs and imperial IPAs are dry-hopped.

With Thomas' help, I threw in just over three ounces of Willamette hops (pictured) into the 10-gallon batch. The hops float on the surface of the beer until they become saturated. They then sink to the bottom.

This is the result of Beer at 6512's collaboration with Ska. The brewery invited me and Jeff Hammett of Beer N Bikes to brew beers under Ska's aegis. We each chose a style, recipe and name for our beers, then brewed it on Ska's equipment with Larsen's help. They will go on tap at Ska later this month.

Dry-hopping was the last step in actually brewing Soggy Coaster Imperial Red. All that remains is about a week of settling, then it goes into carboys and finally kegs. I can't wait to drink it.

Brewing with Ska

Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale is fermenting as you read this.

My collaboration beer with Ska Brewing Co., Soggy Coaster is sitting in a little fermenter next to much larger fermenters holding Ska beers like Decadent Imperial IPA and True Blonde Ale. My little 10-gallon batch is dwarfed by the neighboring 90-barrel (2,790 gallon) tanks. It appears to be holding its own, but who knows what bullying it endures from the bigger tanks after the lights go off at night.


I met with Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen on Monday to brew the beer on Ska's pilot system. It was a time-consuming task that essentially took a full 9-to-5. We started out scrubbing everything with a chlorine solution.

"We do a lot of cleaning," Larsen said. "We're really just glorified dishwashers, with bigger dishes."

We then boiled water, added the malts and heated them up. We stirred the wort and then transferred it into the fermenter via a super-fly coil system.

Aggravatingly, our wort came in with a much-too-low original gravity of 19 degrees Plato, giving the brewing system an inexplicable 43 percent brewhouse efficiency. So Thomas and I started dumping in amber malt extract. We overcompensated, leading to a 20.8 degrees Plato OG.

This means Soggy Coaster should end up around 8.5 to 9 percent ABV, when we were shooting for 7 percent ABV. Hopefully, it won't be overpowering, but there can now be no doubt that it's earning its "imperial" name.

I was aiming to approximate Ninkasi Believer (6.9 percent ABV, 60 IBUs). It looks like it's going to be closer to Oskar Blues Gordon, (8.7 percent ABV, 60 IBUs), another imperial red I greatly admire. The point was to brew a beer unlike any brewed in Durango, and in that, it looks like we'll succeed.

This proves that brewing is both art and science. No matter how many calculations you do or how advanced your equipment is, things can go wrong. I bet it'll still taste good, and maybe even great.

I asked Ska President Dave Thibodeau about what might have gone wrong. He replied: "Not sure, except that it’s just not as efficient as our big system. The question is why did other recent batches vary so much? Regardless, you get the character you were after as far as color and flavor, because the volume didn’t change - adding the malt, assuming it was light, will pretty much just create alcohol and body."

The most fun part was hopping the beer. Each time we threw a batch in - first German Tradition, then Crystal and finally Cascade and Willamette aroma hops - the wort boiled up with a green appearance like split-pea soup. It was beautiful, and the Hop Union pellets had an incredible aroma.

It was also fun to meet the full roster of Ska employees. I have known Thibodeau for years through my work at The Durango Herald - he's Ska's designated media liaison - but it was intriguing to finally meet Ska co-founder Bill Graham and Matt Vincent, who bought in when Ska was only a year old, completing the ownership triumvirate. Everyone at Ska has been warmly welcoming. (Vincent said he's an avid Beer at 6512 reader, which greatly pleases me. I appreciate all the industry folks who read my ramblings).

Wandering around the brewery, I was impressed by how big Ska has grown. In 2009, Ska brewed 11,682 barrels - tiny in comparison to New Belgium or Sierra Nevada, not to mention Coors, but a lot bigger than it used to be.

Throughout the day, young men - and it is mostly young men, although there are women to be found - were clanging kegs against the ground, filling True Blonde cans that whirred into place and, as always, brewing massive batches of Pinstripe. The activity is nonstop. Meanwhile, the huge fermenting tanks loom like Ellis Island statues.

Behind the scenes, Ska HQ is reminiscent of a science lab. There are spectrometers, thermometers, test tubes.

I was also struck by how industrial - dirty, if you like - brewing is. Brewing isn't office work. It's stainless-steel clamps and rubber hoses. It's chlorine and hot water. It's cigarette breaks and swearing when something goes wrong.

Despite our original gravity mishap, I'm excited for the beer to come out. It should be tapped in mid-to-late February, along with Jeff's beer. (Jeff Hammett of Beer N Bikes is brewing a Belgian-American IPA).

My remaining quandary is whether to dry-hop my beer. On one hand, imperial reds are mostly about showcasing the malts, I feel there are plenty of hop bombs out there, and it's not like we didn't hop it in the first place. On the other hand, it could be fun and may add some complexity to the beer. What do you think? Leave a comment.

Our little collaboration is gaining a little media attention. A Durango Telegraph writer interviewed me, my first experience being on the other side of the tape recorder. Hopefully we'll see a story out in February.

Most of all, though, I just want the beer to taste good. That's really what craft brewing is about. I'll let you know when a firm date for the keg-tapping is set.

Photos: At top, Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen (left) and Chuck Slothower, taken by Ska President Dave Thibodeau. Middle and bottom: The inner workings of Ska, photos by Chuck Slothower.

Ska–Beer at 6512 collaboration: The recipe

Designing a beer recipe with Thomas Larsen is a snap. There’s nothing to it. You tell the guy what you want, and he does it.

Larsen, head brewer at Ska Brewing Co., clearly knows what he’s doing. Asking him to design an imperial red ale is a bit like asking a short order cook for scrambled eggs: It’s not exactly stretching the guy’s creativity.

That said, I had a great time working on the recipe, the last step before brewing.

A few weeks ago, Ska President Dave Thibodeau invited Beer at 6512’s own Soggy Coaster and Beer N Bikes blogger Jeff Hammett to collaborate with the Durango brewery, each brewing a beer.

We tell Ska what style we want to brew, we work with them on a recipe, then we actually brew it on Ska’s 10-gallon pilot system. Ska supplies the ingredients and puts it on tap at the brewery. We get to blog about it, with no restrictions from Ska, and bask in the brewery’s reflected glory.

I met with Larsen on Monday to devise the recipe at Ska HQ, with music pounding from the ether above. I’m brewing an imperial red ale based on Ska’s Pinstripe, essentially taking the popular red ale up a few notches in malt body, hop taste and aroma and alcohol. I was inspired to brew an imperial red by an Oregon beer, Ninkasi Believer.

Larsen uses a software program called BeerSmith to design beers. He started with the Pinstripe recipe and did a lot of clicking the “increase amount” button.

The challenge with this beer is to make it different enough from Pinstripe to be interesting, but not so big and boozy that you can’t have a few pints.

This is why I appreciate the Ninkasi beer, which comes in at 6.9 percent ABV and 60 IBUs. It strikes a good balance. I’ve had imperial reds of 10 percent booze that were thick as syrup and not much fun to drink.

Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale, as I’ve come to call it, shoots for 7.95 percent ABV and 60 IBUs. (Pinstripe, by comparison, is 5.6 percent ABV and 27 IBUs).

Larsen said Ska’s pilot system is not as efficient as its big tanks used for commercial brewing, and we can expect the ABV figure to fall short of what we design. It all depends on how hungry the yeast are. Aiming for 7.95 percent ABV gives us some room. If the beer lands between about 7-8 percent ABV, that’ll be fine by me.

We brew Monday. I’ll put in essentially a full day of work at Ska. The beer will have to sit for awhile, but I’ll let you know when it goes on tap.

(Jeff, by the way, is brewing a Belgian-American IPA. His beer was brewed first and will go on tap first).

Now, to the recipe. The Soggy Coaster recipe is essentially Pinstripe taken up a notch, with a few tweaks. Pinstripe is typically spiced with Liberty hops, but apparently they are not to be had. So we’re using German Tradition and Crystal hops instead.

I also asked Thomas to get Willamette hops in the recipe somehow because I’m from the Willamette Valley in Oregon – Corvallis, specifically - and the town name translates from Latin as “Heart of the Valley.” So I wanted to represent for the home team, as they say. The Willamettes serve as aroma hops, replacing Tettnangs in the original Pinstripe recipe.

(I also considered calling the beer Hellafied Gangsta Lean Imperial Red, in homage to that secular prophet of our time, Snoop Dogg, but I figured that would just be confusing. Soggy Coaster is my nom de plume, the result of happy hours with happily overfilled pints soaking the cardboard coasters used by all the Durango breweries).

Without further ado, the recipe for Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale:

Grain:
32.5 lb. Two-row pale malt (2.0 SRM)
2.75 lb. Cara-Pils/dextrine (2.0 SRM)
2.5 lb. Caramel/crystal malt 80L (80 SRM)
1 lb. Caramel/crystal malt 120L (120 SRM)
1 lb. white wheat malt (2.4 SRM)

Hops:
4.5 oz. German Tradition (90 minutes)
4 oz. Crystal (30 minutes)
3 oz. Willamette (5 minutes)
2 oz. Cascade (5 minutes)

Yeast
Like Pinstripe, Soggy Coaster Imperial Red will use Ska’s version of Ringwood Ale Yeast 1187.

Hilariously, this beer is going to come in at 364 calories per pint. If you want diet beer, look elsewhere. If you want tasty beer, keep your eyes on this blog for news of the keg tapping.

Various curios for your reading pleasure

There have been a number of interesting news and blog items I've been meaning to catch up on:

- Ska Brewing Co. will enter Missouri some time in 2010, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Show Me State, gateway to the West, is looking better. Maybe Ska should get Albert Pujols to be its spokesman. He's a great ballplayer and a Missouri icon who hasn't run over any fire hydrants lately, unlike this guy.

- Here's a sonnet from the One Good Beer blog to Steamworks Ale Diablo, a fine Belgian-style ale. (A few bottles remain in the fridge at the brewery). If you're curious, my review from November is here.

- A new brewery in Fort Collins, Equinox Brewing, will open in April next to a homebrew shop, reports the Fort Collins Coloradoan. The owner, Colin Westcott, plans to allow people to brew their own beers and sell them on-premise.

This seems to be an emerging trend, and a good idea. The quality of homebrews may occasionally be uneven, but there promises to be plenty of variety and experimentation at such an establishment.

- Jeff Hammett of the Durango beer blog Beer N Bikes is brewing his Ska collaboration beer. Jeff chose to brew a Belgian-American IPA. He posted his whole recipe, as well as sexy photos of Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen. Go check it out.

This is part of the Ska-Durango beer blogger collaboration of which I am also taking part. I will meet with Thomas on Monday to figure out a recipe, then we'll brew the following Monday. After that, I will drink it all, and you will have none. (Actually, it will be on tap at Ska - I'll let you know when).

My beer will be an imperial red ale based on Ska's own Pinstripe Red Ale and inspired by an Oregon beer, Ninkasi Believer. I'll write a more detailed post about the recipe early next week.

- Beer blogs are being born at an increasingly rapid rate. Check out my "Other Beer Blogs" section to the right and down for some good new blogs. I'm not the only one doing this, just the best. :)

- Today is Beer at 6512's first birthday. Ain't it cute?

Ska update

Ska Brewing Co. has a couple of new beers debuting soon: Ska Sour and Orange Cream Stout.

Ska Sour is the brewery’s first attempt to make a Belgian-style sour (and, I believe, the first brewery in Durango to do so).

Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen introduced Brettanomyces and Lactobacillus yeast to the Belgian amber during barrel aging.

I’m officially excited. Some of the best beers in the world, like Deschutes' The Dissident and Belgium’s Orval, use Brettanomyces. Belgian souring yeasts are a rather beautiful, Old World way of introducing special flavors.

Avery Brewing Co. in Boulder has done similar projects, as with its Brabant release, but Ska is the first Durango brewery to take on the cantankerous Brett monster.

“Basically, we just wanted to experiment with our first sour,” Larsen told me. And good on 'im.

Larsen said the new beer has “a very nice sour aroma,” but is not excessively sour. The brewery will bottle a little over 100 cases of Ska Sour, which is expected to land at roughly 6 percent ABV.

It will debut at Vail’s Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival Jan. 7-9, and in local liquor stores soon after. Bottling is scheduled for today.

Secondly, Ska is also brewing Orange Cream Stout, to be bottled on Jan. 18 and released around Valentine’s Day. I know little about it, but consider: Orange … Cream … Stout. Is there anything about that you don’t like? Me neither.

Finally, the great blogger-brewer collaboration marches on. Larsen and I have a brew date of Jan. 25 for my Ska imperial red ale, essentially a double-Pinstripe. We meet a week before to hash out the recipe.

I’m thinking water, malted barley, hops and yeast will be key ingredients (I know, a bit opaque, but I’ll let you know when we hash out the recipe. It’ll likely be a high-octane version of Pinstripe, a red ale big on Liberty hops and caramel malts, with a classic English Ringwood Ale yeast).

Unlocking Pinstripe's secrets

As part of my collaboration with Ska Brewing Co., the brewery is letting me in on some of Pinstripe's secrets.

I met Friday with Ska President Dave Thibodeau, Head Brewer Thomas Larsen and Beer N Bikes blogger Jeff Hammett to discuss ideas for our upcoming collaboration beers.

To give a little background, Thibodeau reached out to Jeff and I and offered us the opportunity to brew whatever we want on Ska's equipment. A five-gallon keg of each beer will go on tap later this winter.

As I've said, I plan to brew an imperial red ale based on Ska's Pinstripe Red Ale. To get a better idea of the beer's components, Thibodeau, Larsen and I delved a little into Pinstripe's DNA.

Ska's flagship beer, Pinstripe (5.2 percent ABV, 42 IBUs) uses a semi-proprietary variation of an English ale yeast strain, Ringwood Ale Yeast 1187. It's also the backbone of Ska's True Blonde Ale, Buster Nut Brown Ale and Ten Pin Porter.

The yeast strain is so important to Ska that it keeps a sample frozen in a Colorado Springs lab in case all hell breaks out at the Durango brewery. CSI, Durango.

It tolerates up to 10 percent ABV, more than enough for my purposes. I'm aiming for roughly 7 percent ABV with my double-Pinstripe (to be named cleverly at a later date).

Pinstripe is primarily spiced with Liberty hops, an American descendant of Hallertauer Mittlefrüh hops. Tettnang and Cascade hops add to the aroma.

I'm considering upping the Cascade quotient in my beer, because I've found that many beers I admire - Mirror Pond Pale Ale, and Ska's fresh-hop Hoperation Ivy - use Cascades. Of course, I have to exercise some restraint so I don't end up with an imperial IPA (which Ska already brews).

My beer will likely be brewed in late January or early February. Jeff's beer, tentatively a Belgian-style IPA, will go first because it can ferment at a higher temperature and there's some issue with temperature control on Ska's pilot system.

This is a very innovative project. The only other blogger-brewer collaboration I can find is a project by Dogfish Head of Milton, Delaware, and BeerAdvocate to brew an extreme beer. And with all due respect, BeerAdvocate is kind of the Borg of beer blogs: a collective hive mind absorbing everything beer-related that comes within its ubiquitous reach. This is a much more local effort.

If you ever get a chance to talk with Thibodeau or Larsen, pick their brains. They're old-school Colorado guys who can speak fluently about the history of craft beer in Colorado.

Thibodeau and Ska co-founder Bill Graham attended Wheat Ridge High School in suburban Denver with Larsen's older brother. Larsen came to Ska a year ago from Wynkoop Brewing Co. in Denver and helped out as Ska moved into its 24,000-square-foot headquarters in Bodo Industrial Park. He basically stuck around until Ska gave him a job.

If I don't get in Larsen's way too much, we should brew a hell of a beer.

Winter seasonal tasting tonight

I just heard that El Rancho Tavern in Durango will be hosting a winter beer tasting at 5 p.m. tonight (Dec. 12). It costs $10 for a cup, or bring two cans of food for donation. Rumor has it that Ska's Euphoria Pale Ale will be the lowest-alcohol beer featured, so expect some boozy winter warmers.

Ska Brewing Co. to release ... my beer

Ska Brewing Co. President Dave Thibodeau has invited Beer at 6512's own Soggy Coaster and Beer N Bikes' blogger Jeff Hammett to each brew a beer in collaboration with Ska.

We will work with Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen to choose a beer style and devise a recipe. When the beers are done, they will be put on tap at Ska Brewing's headquarters in Durango.

Meanwhile, we will blog, write, photograph, drink and be merry. You get to follow the project from start to finish and drink the resulting beers.

First, this is an extraordinarily innovative project. To my knowledge, Jeff and I will be the first beer bloggers in the nation to brew a beer with a commercial craft brewer. It's a logical extension of the collaborations many breweries, including Ska, have done with homebrewers.

This raises some obvious questions. Let's start with the fun one: What to brew?

I want to choose a style that is not brewed by any of Durango's breweries. That instantly cuts the options down dramatically. Among the four of them, Durango's breweries cover an impressive variety of styles.

I considered a Belgian abbey-style ale, but Ska is soon coming out with a Belgian-style pale ale of its own. So I'm leaning toward an imperial red ale. No brewery in Durango brews an imperial red now, and I don't recall any of them doing so in the past.

Essentially, it would be a double-Pinstripe. My inspiration for this is Ninkasi Believer, an Oregon beer that comes in at 6.9 percent ABV and 60 IBUs. Using as a base Pinstripe, Ska's best-selling beer, might give us a head start.

I don't know what style of beer Jeff has in mind.

I look forward to learning more about brewing. I think I've learned quite a bit about beer, but for a beer blogger, my knowledge of the actual brewing process is pathetically limited.

I can't speak for Jeff, but for me, "working with" Larsen will mostly involve watching him brew and learning. Unless I'm distracted by whatever hairstyle he's into lately. Last I saw, he was sporting a pink mohawk.

To be clear, Ska is paying for the beer ingredients, use of their equipment and Larsen's time. I'm not making a dime from this. And although I'm grateful for this opportunity, I don't plan to begin pulling any punches on Ska or ignoring the brewery's competitors, nor would Thibodeau expect me to.

A five-gallon keg of my beer and Jeff's beer will be on tap at Ska at some undetermined date. Many of the details remain to be nailed down, including the timing, and my idea for the style could change.

But, most importantly, this should be fun. I'll let you know when I know more.