If you frequented SF Beer Week events in February, chances are you came across a collaboration brew featuring East Palo Alto’s Brewing With Brothas.
Brewing With Brothas teamed up with Devil’s Canyon Brewing Co. and ShaKa Brewing on the Pure Harmony Cold IPA with Honey, brewed Maple House Porter with Freewheel Brewing Co., collaborated with Federation Brewing on Rye or Die IPA and developed Black Magic Black IPA with Almanac Beer Co. The week after SF Beer Week, the Brothas’ Into the Stratasphere Hazy IPA collaboration with Strike Brewing Co. also dropped.
While Brewing With Brothas is still working on developing its own brewery and taproom space in East Palo Alto, co-founder Denzel Jackson said he has been very happy with the collaborative approach with other Bay Area breweries.
“It has probably been one of the better things about the model we chose to do,” Jackson said. “When we think about what we need, we need a location and then we’ll get started. But we’re going to incur a whole lot of overhead, and we’re going to need a lot of capital to fund that.”
Collaboration over competition
According to Jackson, Hella Coastal reached out as the first Black brewery that was nearby. Brewing with Brothas attended a couple of events with Hella Coastal, which had collaborated with people in the industry who know all the ins and outs.
“So we’ve been doing the collaborations, and we’ve been able to gather a lot of folks who we didn’t know we would be in contact with first of all,” Jackson said. “And then secondly, they just have a wealth of knowledge about what’s going on and how to navigate it. And thirdly, they were praising how we were doing this. We kind of stumbled upon it, but it seems like one of the better ways to go about it in terms of getting our name out there, and when we eventually do have our place of operation, folks will already know about us.”
Jackson added that Brewing With Brothas “won’t have to prove too much.”
“It’s helping us get the brand out and linking us with folks with a wealth of knowledge we didn’t know we would have available to us,” he said of the collaborations. “That’s one cool thing about the craft brew industry that we really appreciate. It seems like the model is collaboration over competition.”
Jackson and co-founder RiSean “Bookie” Tinsley hope to open a five- to seven-barrel brewery and taproom in their home community of East Palo Alto. Jackson said they would love to “be able to brew beer on a daily basis, and bring the customer base to East Palo Alto, enrich them, show them some of our community and our culture. Having a place where people can meet up and have great conversations and share information. The same things we’ve seen in breweries, we want to do that for our culture and our people.”
After spending the first part of 2022 doing so many collaborations with other breweries, Jackson said he is ready to get back to focusing on Brewing With Brothas recipe development.
“We’ve had kind of a crazy month, so we’re ready to get back to the homebrew and keep practicing,” he said. “We brew basically every weekend; we’re just practicing getting these recipes down.”
Upcoming plans include a second merchandise run to continue building the brewery’s brand, and the launch of a new website. Until that is up and running, the best way to see what’s happening with the brewery is on Instagram at @brewing.with.brothas.
Porter and IPA
Maple House Porter, brewed in collaboration with Redwood City’s Freewheel Brewing, pours a deep-brown color, with ruby highlights and a dense beige head. The aroma highlights fresh, lightly sweet coffee, notes of milk chocolate and subtle hints of maple on the back end. The flavor is quite similar, with the coffee and subtle roast up front, followed by the maple character. Medium-bodied, with a smooth mouthfeel (even more so if you’re lucky enough to try the cask-conditioned version), the beer finishes with a lightly earthy-sweet maple note.
Almanac Beer collaborated on the Black Magic Black IPA, a dark-brown, somewhat hazy ale with a low ecru-colored head. A delicate hint of roast on the aroma takes a backseat to big tangerine citrus hoppiness. On the palate, the orange peel and coconut hop flavors imparted by Sabro hops dominate, with moderate hop bitterness and minimal roast. With a medium body and moderate carbonation, the hop bitterness and fruity flavors linger throughout the finish.
Derek Wolfgram is a Certified Beer Judge through the Beer Judge Certification Program and an officer of the Silicon Valley Sudzers homebrew club. For more information, visit sudzers.org.
