(Dexter, MI) – The third version of the Special Holiday Ale trio got label approval.

[12/8 Updates: See below]

[Update 1: From NUBC Sales VP, Mike Turriff as posted on Beer Advocate, “Our version, JP version, of the Holiday Collaboration will be hitting shelves soon. We finally, took over 2 months, received label approval from the TTB and hence the reason why it has not been released as of yet. We brewed three batches of the beer using the same recipe as Stone and Nogne O. The first was brewed in April 2009 and the subsequent batches were brewed end of 2009. All three batches have been aging on Oak since then and will be blended. The Collababeire will be primarily released in California and Michigan due to its limited nature.”]

[Update 2: Again, from Turriff, in response to my questions…

-Not sure on exact case count but will be around 300 cases. Primarily distributed in MI and CA.
-Bottle only with exception of a few kegs for our Jolly Pumpkin restaurants.
-No release party per se but beer should be out in early January. Will be doing a beer dinner in Detroit on January 25th at Roast (Iron Chef Michael Symon’s restaurant). All three breweries will be featured at dinner with all three versions of Collaboration served as well as other beers from each brewery.
-Beire intentionally spelled that way. Why? Why not! We are different so we do things differently.]

Original Post:

Collababeire was brewed at Jolly Pumpkin. This version looks similar to the others with one main difference: the addition of souring bacteria, Lactobacillus, as well as naturally occurring wild yeast, Brettanomyces, during the aging process [clarification note: they do not innoculate]. The label features a Nogne O logo but why is there no Stone Brewing logo? [Wow, I totally missed the representation of the pumpkin as the Stone logo.] And is that a misspelling that I see? The French spelling for beer should be “bière.”

My contact at JP is currently on the road but I should (or hope to) have answers to those questions and more before the end of the day/evening.

Until then, here is the original label from when the three breweries first collaborated at Stone. Notice the beginning of the formation of Ron Jeffries’ haiku there. Here is the second label from when the beer was produced at Nogne O.