Collabfest 2021

Anyone partaking this year? I didn’t get any of the beers in 2020, so might wander down in a few minutes…

Was planning to head to a few London bars tonight but decided to go for the biggest tick of 2020/21 instead … despite it being a '19 vintage !

Now self isolating for the duration of Collabfest!

Brewdog Tallinn will have 15 new different beers, so of course tickers gonna tick…

Oh no! So sorry to hear that. Hope you and yours are alright.

Fucking BD Leicester. I love the place, not their fault but they get the dregs of the BrewDog stable. No Estonian or Icelandic beers for this guy.

Forgot about this. Kinda wish they canned them like last year, a bit hard for me to get to Brum to try them.

Was there on Tues and, bizarrely, it was completely dead. We were the only people there from 9pm - 10pm. Odd. No collabfest beers unfortunately.

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You say ‘not their fault’ but in my experience of Brewdog bars it depends on the GM and how hard they fight for a good selection of beers. A former GM of the Bristol bar, in maybe 2017 or 2018, was so determined to get a keg of every Collabfest beer that she went to London on the train solely to collect one keg from Tower Hill to complete the set.

In that era the kegs were randomly allocated around the bars unless there are specific requests. No idea if anything has changed since.

Thanks … glad to have it and get it out of the way in some respects, before winter kicks in despite the inconvenience. Hopefully have as good as an immunity as one can expect now.

For me it’s been a stinking head cold that has lingered on more than usual.

For the wife a mid level flu.

Nothing terrible all round though for which we’re thankful and coming through the other side now!

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If it is the same as it was the last time Pühaste did collabfest beer, then the Estonian beer will be released (later) in the can. Of course no idea if it makes it to UK, but usually Pühaste beers can be bought from EU webshops…

They have it in Nottingham. I was quite keen to try this one but not enough to hop on the train.

Oh, are we doing the / thing for the beers (i.e. Greene King / BrewDog Luton Extra Caramel Bitter)? I understood that we’d decided against it as they weren’t proper collaborations per se, but very happy to add the / to the beers

Any loss of taste and smell? - disconcerted me when that happened (about a week after my initial positive test) but luckily it came back OK and went back to normal

Yeah … not total loss … more smell than taste as I’ve had a very congested head.

Had a few cask beers last Saturday that seemed a bit muted … but put that down to just being low ABV cask beers. Then had some stronger stouts on Sunday and again … a bit dull.

Tested positive on Monday this week.

I think my taste has got better the past few days … had a few imperial stouts tonight as a tester.

Still nowhere near 100% and smell is the main fail but certainly more taste than last weekend so hopefully back soon!

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I went to the Oxford BD yesterday. Made the mistake of expecting the interesting beers that were on for Thursday still being available, not realising that they change every keg on each day of the Festival. Looks like they decided to have a sour day on Friday, stripped my palate and throat by the end of the day. I did get a taster of the Accidental Tonka Mon Cherry? though, which was absolutely glorious. Missed the Estonian and Swedish beers because of this though.
My third Covid jab and Flu jab this morning so not expecting to be able to do much this afternoon.

Good for you, doing the best thing and drinking your way through it, imperial stouts are the best medicine :grinning:

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Just took me ages adding the Brewdog Nice beer, looks like new brewery as far as I could find, Brasserie Gekko. Hope it’s correct.

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The same discussion in 2019 :slight_smile:

I will rename Estonian beer after collabfest is over as it is not a collab in traditional/rb sense (unless you consider giving a price range a collab?!) and at least historically these have not been exclusives as I also indicated previously.
IMHO this should be actually handled with a tag, but it is up to the region admins to decide (as they will have the information to decide whether it is a collab or not).

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As martjoobolut says. Same discussion almost every single year since collabfest began…! What a pain in the ass. Hopefully collabfest will stop and we don’t have to talk about it again… :upside_down_face:

The Scottish brewed ones will have the bar name in the title as the bars here commonly don’t mention the beer name at all. More info is better than less when searching to see if a beer is in the database. This year’s entries on untappd are truly a mess. Most beers have muliple entries… so not just us.

Tbh a high % of collabs in the RB database aren’t strictly collabs between 2 actual brewers of 2 breweries. Just send up an intern… job done. Or some guy from one of your bars. Or how about a “remote collab” over zoom?

Obvs if they are not exclusive and just a re-brew etc no need.

The condition was pretty shit for a lot of those crowlers though… Easier but not so enjoyable.

I’ve only done the crowlered ones from last year, so not remotely an authority on the matter. However my opinion is that if you use the location name it should have the / as it just doesn’t look right without it. If they aren’t a collab leaving the Brewdog pub name out makes more sense, but as you point out sometimes makes it harder to find. I guess this debate will continue…

Sidenote: Recently at the Edinburgh Brewdog and they didn’t even have the breweries in name on the board, was making it hard to figure out who made what.