GUIDE: Collabrewnation, a Craft Beer Festival for the Hop-Obsessed

(SPOT.ph) On February 26 and 27, the District Brewing Company at Greenfield District in Mandaluyong is celebrating its grand opening with a pretty serious event. They're calling it Collabrewnation, and it finds the young brewery serving up eight new beers, seven of them done in collaboration with another brewery, and the last one with a coffee shop. Four of those breweries are from outside the Philippines, possibly ushering in a new era of cooperation between the craft brewers of the continent. 

It is, at the very least, an indication of the maturation of the craft beer scene in the Philippines. While still very much a cottage industry, craft brewing in the country has been growing steadily, and Collabrewnation is the kind of event that captures the energy and excitement over what's been going on, with breweries cooperating and learning from each other, trying to collectively preach the gospel of better beer. 

The Ranch Brewing has been making its mark as a craft brewery in South Korea since 2016. They started out in Daejeon and have since built a pub in the heart of Seoul. Owner and head brewer Fred Huyssen has worked with a Philippine brewery before, working with Boondocks Beer for a calamansi wheat lager. 

Ranch Brewing returns to the Philippines for this new collaboration, putting together a rather unique beer, brewed with two different strains of yeast. It's a hazy, heavily hopped beer that's also tart, serving as a base for the flavors of sundried calamansi. 

Ho Chi Minh City's Steersman Brewery started out of a dormitory and has since become a great success story in the Vietnamese craft beer scene. Their beers and hard sodas are sold throughout Vietnam, in various bars, restaurants, and convenience stores. 

Steersman prides itself on using local ingredients and trying to capture the flavors of their native Vietnam. They settled on using coconut for their collaboration, an ingredient common to both nations. It's a soft, pillowy brew that's sweet up front and delivers a payload of coconut flavor in the back end. 

1925 Brewing Co. is a family business out of Singapore, started by the Yeo brothers and their uncle. 1925 is the birth year of their grandfather, a Teochew tradesman who started a general goods store in the city decades ago. 

With their collaboration with District Brewing Company, they decided to brew a fruited lager, with guava and mango added to give it a burst of distinctly tropical flavor. 

Sandport Brewing Co. was founded in 2014, just North of Bangkok in Nonthaburi. The pioneering brewery was part of the United People's Brewery, a cooperative effort between craft brewers to find a way around Thailand's restrictions on small-scale production of beer. 

They've since become one of the most recognizable beverage brands in Thailand, with the Sandport IPA a staple for any discerning drinker. For this event, they've made a Cold IPA, which is a heavily-hopped lager. For that Thai flair, they’ve added jasmine rice to the mash for heft and flavor.

Just before Treeline Ales closes their Brewpub space in Robinson’s Magnolia and moves their operation elsewhere, they’ve made time to join the collaboration effort with District Brewing Company. A favorite among craft beer enthusiasts in Metro Manila, Treeline has a reputation for making some of the best IPAs the country has to offer.

So it’s fitting that they made a classic West Coast-style IPA for the event. Rich, fruity, with a nice bitter finish: it’s exactly the kind of beer that made people fall in love with craft beer in the first place.

Palm Tree Abbey has been steadily making waves ever since opening their space in Comuna in San Antonio Village, Makati. Recently, they’ve taken on a new brewer, who worked in some of the biggest breweries in Europe, and the increase in quality and consistency is rather noticeable.

For the event, they’ve gone with a European-style beer as well. A hopfenweisse is a more heavily-hopped version of a hefeweizen, a German-style wheat beer. Expect the same rich banana and clove notes, backed with a stronger bitter hop finish.

The Brewman is the one collaborator here that is not a brewery. The Cubao Expo Coffee Shop has just celebrated its fifth year, and they’re teaming up with The District Brewing Company to make a beer version of one of their signature drinks.

The Murasakhi is made with coffee, oat milk, and blueberries. The District has made a stout, a malty dark beer,  that they’ll enhance with cold brew coffee and blueberries as well.

The District Brewing Company isn’t the only brewpub run by owner Jun Flores. El Deposito in San Juan is a staple of the craft beer scene, and Flores has mostly passed on brewing duties to other brewers that he’s trained. And for this event, he is collaborating with his own brewery to deliver a pretty unusual beer style: a smoothie sour. Essentially, it is a sour ale base that is mixed in the keg with a lot of fruit puree. It is basically an alcoholic fruit smoothie.

Attendees to the event will be able to have all the beer they want for P1,500 pesos for a one-day ticket, or P2,000 pesos for both days. On Friday, 2 p.m., the brewery is also hosting a special five-course food and beer pairing meal for P2,000, which also includes entrance to the event that day.

Collabrewnation will be at held Greenfield District, Mandaluyong City on February 26 and 27. For tickets, fill out the Collabrewnation ticket form.