Penticton Beer Week is here, and a whole bunch of folks from a whole bunch of local breweries spent much of Monday cranking out 4800 cans of a craft beer designed just for the occasion.
The new brew is called Community Common, and each can bears the logo of all seven Penticton breweries. And that's because all of them had a hand in its creation, from concept through recipe through the undeniably pretty label.
It's the first ever collaborative effort from the full complement of local beer-makers, and judging by everything PentictonNow learned this morning, it won't be the last.
"Originally we were all going to do it for fun, as a group," said Bad Tattoo head brewer Liam Hutcheson as can after can rolled through Bad Tattoo's slick new "Cask" canning machine. "Then it just worked out timing-wise that we could do it for Beer Week."
Seems that rather than being at each other's throats, the members of Penticton's burgeoning brewery scene have adopted a platform of unity. And it appears to have come about organically.
"It shows the public how collaborative we are," said Neighbourhood Brewing head brewer Darren Binnena, also working the canning line today.
Binnena, who's new to Penticton after a long stint at Port Moody's Yellow Dog, already knows about the sense of community in the city's brewery culture. With Bad Tattoo's blessing, and during Neighbourhood's construction phase, he's been making beer under the Neighbourhood Brewing label at Tattoo's Estabrooke Avenue address for the past several months.
"As an industry, we're very community focused," he said. "We work well together. They're letting us brew here. If I need a bag of malt, I can go ask any of the breweries."
"It's great because we've been able to be a part of this even though we're not open yet."
Also on hand was Highway 97 Brewery co-owner and brewer Nick Kapusty, who took a quick break to tell us that "this is definitely a first. I think it's pretty cool to bring to our community something from all the breweries in this area."
"I think it's a sweet idea. And Beer Week is a new thing too. It really makes our little town stand out."
And if Community Common tastes as good as its label looks and as today's vibe seemed to be, they'll have a winner on their hands. A winner that they'll continue concocting going forward.
"Community Common is a play on a style called California common," said Hutcheson. "As a brewing community, we thought we'd name it Community Common."
"But no one around here knows what a California common is. It's an uncommon style, and that's nice because we're seven different breweries and we get seven opportunities to share this beer with Penticton.
"And none of us had ever made one. So this was a cool idea instead of doing something more common like a classic pale ale."
As to the taste, Hutcheson said, "It's a fresh taste. It uses BC malts and BC hops. It's a malt-forward beer, but it has a nice little fruity pop character toward the end. It's an easy-drinking beer."
Binnema added that it's "an amber beer with a nice crystal malt flavour coming through. But it's not too sweet either, so that makes it pretty sessionable, with a little bit of a citrus dry hop character at the end. It's a west coast twist on an old California style beer."
Community Common will be available at all seven Penticton breweries and various other spots throughout the city for the duration of Penticton Beer Week, which includes six highlight events between Tuesday and Friday at six prominent venues.
Part proceeds from its sale will go to the Penticton and Area Cycling Association.
"It's a big thing for us," said Hutcheson, "because this is the first one we've all done together. I think we'd like to do two beers a year as a collaboration. We had a lot of fun doing it."
"And really," he added with a laugh, "why fight each other for taps when we can try to take over Budweiser's taps?"
