We’re so excited to announce a new lovechild we’ve been cooking up for the last several
months. This is a big one, and a first of it’s kind.
It’s official y’all – TrimTab and Wild Leap Brewing are having a baby! A 12oz, hazy, fruited, coconutty, beautiful baby. And we’re super excited to show you a million selfies, obsesses to you that it’s special – and as with all new parents, bring it to a brewery.
First, meet the baby daddies and mommies.
Considering you are on our website, I’ll assume that you’ve at least heard of TrimTab. If you
haven’t, then pretty please take a minute and check out the About Us section of our website.
Bottom line for us – we primarily brew modern IPAs, fruited sours, experimental stouts, and
celebrate small sources of big change. Over the past year we’ve been thrilled to be recognized by national and local publications as the best brewery in our city and among the top brewers in the United States. And we’re just getting started.
Wild Leap is an awesome newish brewery located in LaGrange, GA and they have been making major waves in the Southern craft beer community. Like us, they have settled into a number of specialized styles, and their approach to those beers has gained them some awesome national attention. Just a few short weeks ago they were voted Best New Brewery in the whole damn country by USA Today! Congrats guys and well earned!
Next, meet our little bundle of joy – Coco Flamingo Hazy Double IPA. This little sweetie has
layer upon layer of hoppy goodness, boasts a sturdy 8% ABV, and is finished off with hefty
additions of toasted coconut, tangerine, and key lime. The end result is somewhere between a pina colada and a juicy DIPA. Not exactly your grandpa’s fizzy yellow lawnmower swill.
Collaboration is in our blood. It’s part of what fuels the fire that enables making over fifty new
beers in a year possible. It’s also what reaffirms why we do what we do – we are CREATING A
WORLD WE LOVE!
In some ways collaborative brewing is like jazz. The end product is important, but it’s equally
about the process. Like a jazz standard, making a craft beer like this involves a shared
foundation between the artists. In music it might be a primary melodic motif or rhythmic
section. In beer it’s the baseline steps that all brewers share – the primary elements of the
brewing process (mash>lauter>boil>cellar). But what happens in the space between is where the real magic happens – the improvisation.
Collaboration in the brewing world can often times be a boiler plate for splitting the creative
baby. In our opinion, too many beers come out with dual logos on it, and the final product is
more of a dilution of each brewer’s creative voice rather than an extension of it. People play it safe. People avoid risk, or hold back on techniques because they don’t want to spill the beans on something they view as proprietary.
That was not the case here. We challenged ourselves to improvise, push the boundaries, and
take risks with a combination of ingredients neither of had used before. We made jazz –
complete with vigorous hand gestures. And the end result is complex, unique, and delicious.
For us at TrimTab, a successful collaboration involves a few key elements.
First there needs to be an alignment of styles and quality. Wild Leap has recently made a name for themselves with their hazy IPA-focused Alpha Abstraction series and recently their fruited dessert inspired Truck Chaser series. If you haven’t tried them yet, do yourself a favor and track some down.
For us this was a natural fit. Alpha Abstraction might as well be a sister series to our Light
Visions Collection. And anyone that follows us, knows that we love to incorporate fruit
additions in our beers. Most recently this has taken form in our beloved Beach Club series,
which focuses on higher gravity, cocktail-inspired sour beers. So, it was like peas and carrots
deciding to essentially mash up all these different series of beers into Coco Flamingo.
Next there needs to be an alignment of values. From the first time we met the Wild Leap crew we were immediately impressed with their commitment to quality, their prioritization of
innovation, and high attention to detail. We loved that they, similar to us, aren’t using anyone else in the industry as a model and instead only use their personal creativity as the north star. We share a “why not?!” kind of mentality and we loved that attitude was reflected in both our company’s beers and cultures.
Lastly, for us a successful collaboration needs to be equally focused about developing a
legitimate friendship with the other party. It’s not about robotically churning out a new beer or “phoning it in.” As the craft beer industry continues to rapidly grow and evolve, it’s really
important to us that relationships come first. I believe that we’re all collectively fighting against craft beer becoming a commodity, and that one of the best ways of accomplishing that is making sure the humanity, the struggles, and the intentions of all these beers are well known to the people that support them. We hosted the Wild Leap guys at the brewery, shared some beers and laughs, and over the course of the last several months have developed a true friendship with their whole team.
In that spirit, one of the most exciting aspects to this project to me will be the collaborative
events we are planning at select bars, restaurants, and stores throughout our distribution
footprint. We want all of you to be able to meet our brewers and staff, and to grow our circle of friends even larger to include you. The plan is to mutually showcase some of our newest beers alongside each other, centered around our little boozy baby – Coco Flamingo! Stay tuned to our social media for location announcements.
So cheers to our buddies at Wild Leap. Cheers to all of you for supporting craft breweries like us. And we look forward to sharing our misfit little creation with all of you soon!
From our family to yours!
- Harris Stewart / CEO
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