Incubating a New Way to Co-Brew a Beer

It’s an idea I’ve thought about for quite a while, but it took a beer-inspired conversation with Ed Elliot from the Wyoming Valley Homebrewers to bring it in to focus.  Ed did a pilot test of his new 50-gallon brewing system at National Homebrew day, and at the end he split up the wort to multiple brewers, who all “fermented” their own version of Ed’s Pale Ale wort.  At the end they brought all of the version back together and sampled them.

Well that experience got me thinking (which we all know is a dangerous thing)…what are the commercial applications of this Incubation of diverse beers with a common “egg”?  What if one of our local commercial breweries brewed a batch of wort, that wort was split among several other local craft breweries, each did their very own take on that beer, and the resulting beers were brought back together under a special event tasting.  Of course this would naturally lend itself to brewing a vertical series of beers, perhaps each brewer fermenting and aging the wort to different ages and then sampling the fresh, 1-year old, 2-year old… in a vertical tasting.

The possibilities are endless for barrel aging and perhaps even distilling the same base “egg” wort into brews that have a common father’s family resemblance, but the diverse result from the hand-crafting of each individual brewer & distiller.

So I’m throwing the idea out in it’s simplest form.  I’d love to see a few of our local craft brewers incubate this idea into a special yearly event.  One brewery picks a style and creates the wort, several other brewers (commercial or home brewers), take that wort to the next level and brew a beer, and each year those beers return to the home brewery for a special tasting event (maybe even to benefit a charity)?  NEPA, East Coast, West Coast…..who’s in?  All I ask is that you include me in on the fun!