This week’s episode is devoted to an entirely different collaboration. This one is between Thomas Larsen of Ska Brewing from Durango Colorado, and Stephan Mance from Half Acre right here in Chicago.
This collaboration, like most, is largely for fun and a trip to Chicago, which Ska founder Dave Thiboldeaux is fond of making. But there’s a special reason that these two breweries are tied together and that’s through the little-known history of some hardware. You’ll often hear people talk about lineage and pedigree in brewing, the influence that a single brewer can have as he or she makes their way through the world working at a variety of breweries all over the country. It’d be one helluva genealogy protect to map out. But long before people were forced to buy new steel to open a brewery, there was a healthy secondary market for used equipment — and many of those brewhouses have lived a journeyman’s life of their own.
So with that in mind, we got together at the studio to chat about the collaboration, but also some of the experiences that have shaped each brewery, and how they’re adapting to the future, each according to their own evolution.