2017: A Year in Review
As we continue to work on funding our dream, we know the disc golf tournament lifestyle is what pays the bills. So, when approached at the beginning of 2017 to brew a collaboration beer for The Memorial Championship in Phoenix, we knew we couldn’t turn down this amazing offer to disc golf in the sunshine and continue to build on our brewing experience.
We joined forces with the Perch Pub and Brewery to come up with the Circle’s Edge IPA. This beer was kegged and released at multiple drinking holes across the Valley of the Sun during the week of the tournament. The release parties at each location were very successful, and it was a dream come true to have our friends and disc golf fans from across the country come to show their support.
It was then that we realized that our notoriety in disc golf could help bring outside business into our sport while providing the opportunity to gain more brewing experience and experimenting with new recipes. We knew we were on the right track, and were motivated to do more.
From there, we began receiving an outstanding amount of emails inviting us to travel, brew, and compete in various events. We took our touring schedule into account and began making plans to do as many collaboration brews throughout the country as we could. We aptly called this the 2017 Bevel Collaboration Series, where we can travel to brew, compete in disc golf tournaments, and continue to work on our business.
In April, we traveled to Wisconsin to brew with the Explorium Brewpub of Greendale, and brewed the SkyPA Session IPA to release at the Skyline Classic, hosted by Terry Miller, the Disc Golf Guy. We started off the event by hosting a release party at the brewery and got to meet a huge contingent of Milwaukee disc golfers. Explorium owner Mike XXX and his family came out on Saturday for the Pro event to serve lunch and samples of the beer. The beer was on tap at a local restaurant down the road where the awards ceremony was held. The Am part was contested Sunday. Mike and his family came out again to prepare lunch and serve samples, but this time Mike competed in his very first disc golf tournament. The two rounds were also followed up by awards at the local restaurant and tall, frothy pints of SkyPA filled the tables. Needless to say, we truly embraced all Brew City had to offer!
We then traveled to Emporia, Kansas, to work with JJ of Radius Brewing, to experiment with a dry-hopped Saison, which was sarcastically named Slight Headwind after Kansas’s strong prairie winds. The week started out with the release of the beer at the Kansas Beer Fest with the largest collection of Kansas breweries ever. Nate poured tasters and I sold Bevel T-shirts, collaboration discs, and chatted about disc golf with the locals and fellow brewers. The saison got rave reviews during this debut and was then on tap all week long at Radius, which was slammed with disc golfers every night. Twenty-two ounce bottles we’re on sale in limited-release labeled with the incredible artwork by Joshua Finley.
We returned to our home state to brew our first Oregon collaboration with Calapooia Brewing. We helped brew the Pine Bender Pale, which was sold on draft and in 22-oz. bottles for sale at our favorite disc golf event, the Beaver State Fling. Owner Mark Martin has been playing disc golf for XXX years and allows Zoe AnDyke and Dustin Keegan to run a putting league throughout the brewery warehouse every week from October to May.
One of the largest women’s tournaments in the world, the Rocky Mountain Women’s Disc Golf Championship, was high on the list for collaborations. Colorado is known for its great beer scene, and this is one of my favorite events to play. For this, we flew to Denver to brew up a light, refreshing, and immensely hopped German-style Kölsch that we called Hummingbirdies to reflect the event’s logo theme. The event produced temperatures in the 90s so this was a great after-round refresher, and provided the women a chance to get together and socialize Saturday night.
Our 2016 brewing season wrapped up with the release of the final edition of the Fiddlehead series, and the Overstable Double IPA was released at the Green Mountain Championships.
All of these collaborations were made possible by the breweries and brewers that gave us a chance. We would also like to thank everyone who has supported us on this amazing journey through supporting our initial GoFundMe campaign, purchasing a T-shirt, disc, or bottle of beer. It is important that we support those who support disc golf, and we are doing our best to make that as easy as ordering a delicious, locally brewed pint of beer.
We found that the most successful collaborations were the ones where the owner, head brewer, assistant brewers, or even the whole staff were already into the sport. If you would like us to consider visiting your tournament, start the networking with your local brewery, and then reach out to us to get the ball rolling, or should we say, “disc flying.”
