Dark Passenger – Where it all began, a place far far away…
We’re gonna go back, wayyyyy back, back into time…
Ok ok it was in 2001, so not THAT long ago, when Tom (Black Bottle’s Head Brewer) met Eric (Blue Point Brewing’s Head Brewer), but a lot has changed since then though.
Tom was serving tables and Eric was a cook. See told you things have changed. A few years later, they both began working at John Harvard’s Brewery and Ale House in Lake Grove, where Tom was bartender and Eric was an Assistant Brewer. Eventually, Eric took a position with Blue Point Brewing Company, at which point Tom assumed the vacant role of Assistant Brewer at John Harvard’s.
The rest is history.
Not really, but long story short, Tom grew his knowledge and skill sets over the past decade, eventually landing his current gig as Head Brewer here at Black Bottle Brewery. Eric put his talents to work and climbed the ranks at Blue Point Brewing, where he is now Head Brewer.
Fast forward to Collab Fest 2017. Having remained in contact over the years, discussing endless collaboration ideas, the two finally made all the chats/talks/texts come to fruition.
Putting their creative minds together, the guys came up with a Tart Salty Chocolate Brown. Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down. You’re probably thinking to yourself that’s way too much going on in a single beer, but just trust us. The guys used a plethora of ingredients, including; locally grown malts from both Colorado and New York, Colorado’s Noosa Yoghurt as the souring agent, four varieties of seaweed (Dulse, Kelp, Wakambe, and Kombu) from the North Atlantic, and Fort Collins’ own Nuance Chocolate (cocoa husks in the mash, and cocoa nibs in the secondary).
First debuted at the 2017 Collaboration Fest in Denver, CO, and now only found in our taproom, this collab has the people pleasantly surprised. The subtle tart beginning, quickly mellowed out by the salinity from the seaweed, followed by chocolaty goodness to finish it all off, has been turning skeptics in to believers.
