Western Mass Beer Week 2018 Brewery Collaboratives Review

 Western Mass Beer Week 2018 Collaborative Overview

Another year, another successful Western Mass Beer Week is in the books here at Brewin Around. I will say compared to last year, I was more active in festivities with the time and money I had, so that was enough to celebrate. Got to see the folks over at Beerology give a great presentation of the History of Beer, some things that I never knew before. I got to go to a lager brew off to see which brewery makes the best one. Hands down the best one went to Iron Duke and their Generosity. Never would've thought you could have a beer that is traditionally a very summery beer and make it works as a nice transition to fall kind of beer with the smoked maple bacon and vanilla flavors added into the beer. I also went to a special beer Randalling event which infuses fruit with craft beer and I was somewhat disappointed with how mine turned out. I had a Bear and Breamble Saison with strawberries and I was expecting a sweeter taste but it tasted like it didn't even go through the fruit. But for today, I'm gonna talk about some of the collaborative beers that were made for this years Beer Week so let's get started! 

This beer was first made during last year's Beer Week and I can see why it was brought back. This one packs a punch. I've tried Abandoned's barrel aged stouts in the past and I can tell that they had a hand in adding the boozy parts of this beer while Lefty made the stouts since the bourbon is as strong as those other ones. And yet, the texture is pretty smooth once you hold it in for a bit. Prepare for a bit of a prolong stinging aftertaste, which I learned comes from the barrel chips. Overall a great beer to wake you up a bit if needed :P

The Hazeopotamus IPA is another collaborative from Abandoned Building and Amherst Brewery. This one was definitely a special one. Haze is a big trend in the IPA world at the moment and this one didn't disappoint on that end. One pour and the cloudiness of the beer. Very juicy in taste and another interesting part was it's creamy texture. Never thought you could get away with that in an IPA, but that was a unique feature. Probably the best IPA I've had so far this year and I hope they bring it back for next year too!

The final collaborative I had for this year's Western Mass Craft Beer was The House That Beer Built APA. This was a group effort from too many local breweries to put into one sentence here and the proceeds to sale of this beer went to the Habitat For Humanity organization. The House could only be found at the  This was a beer I was kind of meh on. It wasn't a very overally hoppy beer, but there really wasn't too much to it. Had a bit of a wheaty aftertaste which was kind of interesting, but really, that was all that stuck out. I appreciate the cause, but it wasn't for me really.

 One thing that I took out of this year's Western Mass beer Week was that there is a long way to go to get through a lot of these Western Mass breweries before I start venturing into other parts of New England, so be on the look out for more brewery visits as well as single can reviews as usual. But until then this is Andrew once again saying Cheers To You.