In early December, New Belgium Brewing brewmaster Peter Bouckaert traveled to Terrapin Beer Co. in Athens to join Terrapin brewmaster Brian "Spike" Buckowski for a collaborative brew day.
As with many craft brewers now, collaborations have become commonplace for both Bouckaert and Buckowski. In fact, the first edition of the beer they created together, dubbed Black is the New Wit, was brewed in October 2014, when Buckowski went to Ft. Collins, Colorado to work with Bouckaert at New Belgium.
Both versions of their Imperial Black Rye Wit use the same recipe, based on a traditional Belgian-style wit, or white wheat beer, with coriander and bitter orange peel. But it was brewed with six different malts, including rye, which has become a signature ingredient for Terrapin and Buckowski.
It was hopped with Sorachi Ace, Lemondrop and Mandarina Bavaria. The addition of black wheat and de-husked roasted barley gives the beer its very non-traditional dark color. It was wood-aged on cedar at New Belgium, and on sassafras at Terrapin.
Along with a couple of other beer writers, I joined Bouckaert and Buckowski at Terrapin in December, to watch them brew Black is the New Wit. I was curious about the collaborative process, and how they come up with recipes.
Bouckaert grew up in Belgium and studied biochemistry and brewing in Flanders. He got his start at the legendary Belgian brewery, Rodenbach, where he made the kind of sour and aged beers that were rarely seen in the U.S. before he landed at New Belgium in 1996.
Asked how he and Buckowski decided to brew together, Bouckaert laughed, exaggerated his Flemish accent, and said, “Once upon a time …” Then he launched into a story about meeting Buckowski years ago at the Toronado beer bar in San Francisco.
“We got talking and decided we should do something together, and then we never did — until now,” Bouckaert said, and laughed some more.
“The first idea was doing something with muscadine grapes,” Buckowski remembered. “But that became a hassle with the ingredients, so we flipped around to a few other things and came up with this Black is the New Wit idea. We wanted to give it another dimension, not only with coriander and orange peel, but also age it on a little bit of wood.”
Asked about collaborations in general, and the current popularity of beer designed by two or more brewmasters, Bouckaert and Bukowski nodded in agreement.
“I’ve been doing it since I started in the U.S.,” Bouckaert said. “I started brewing with the Rodenbach strain at a brewpub in Boulder, while trying to maintain the yeast. But I’ve done Allagash, Cigar City, Alpine, all over.”
“I guess I started in Colorado too, doing collaborations with Left Hand,” Buckowski said. “We go to Europe every February on a beer trip and I’ve done a bunch there, in England and Belgium and Holland. Just to see other breweries and how they do things is valuable. It’s exciting to see different systems and different ways to approach beer making.”
“Every collaboration is unique in its concept,” Bouckaert said. “In this case, we brewed the same beer twice, but at different breweries. That doesn’t happen very often.”
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