We were interviewed by the flagpole about our brewery plans and were featured in an article about beer in Athens. This caught the attention of Jon Swindler who is an art professor at the University of Georgia. The article had highlighted Brian as a graduate of the Lamar Dodd School of Art at UGA. Jon was teaching a class on collaboration for the fall semester in 2013 and he reached out to SBC via Facebook to see if we would be interested in collaborating. SBC jumped at the chance. Brian and Jon started working out the particulars.
Jon discussed the project with the class and they settled on creating a winter warmer or an imperial stout, since it wouldn’t be ready to drink until early December. The entire class came out to Gratis, our pilot brewery, and spent the day trying past recipes and discussing the history of art and beer. Keith Phillips drove down from Asheville to join in the day and to further collaborate on existing ideas.
Everyone settled on brewing an imperial stout and every student took turns milling grain and doughing in. This kept the collaborative spirit and made for an unrepeatable batch. That brought the beer itself closer to art. The bottles that were opened that day were cleaned and reused to bottle the finished beer. We split their beer into three batches. One batch got blended into this year’s GingerNaut and was aged in a whiskey barrel. The other two were separated into two different carboys. The first carboy was infused with maple syrup and honey, while the second fermenter was infused with peppermint and chocolate.
In December we gathered everyone back at Gratis and tasted a flight of the finished beers. That class made a great base beer and each of the three variations was creative and delicious. The class had collaborated on a printing project and presented Brian with an incredible set of prints for SBC. Each student created a unique print for the set and they designed a beautiful box/sleeve to hold them in. We thoroughly enjoyed working with Jon and we look forward to future collaborations. Cheers professor Swindler!
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