As I've mentioned multiple times, I had the opportunity to check out a couple of breweries over the Christmas holiday, including Collusion Tap Works out of York, Pennsylvania. The brewery opened its doors earlier this year in a recently-renovated section of York, and has a nice though fairly typical tap/tasting room set-up: industrially-styled bar area with tables adjacent to the production area, with a small sales area for various apparel, sauces, and a few other items, and a small in-progress food set-up.

The most impressive aspect of Collusion's operation is the sheer quantity of beers they are making. The tap room has 24 taps, each holding a different offering, and we (my parents and I) overheard on the day we visited, a Monday, that they wanted to roll out 6 new beers by Friday. We had the opportunity to try roughly a dozen of their offerings, and with the exception of one non-traditional style, all were drinkable, at minimum, and most were good-to-great.

Enough prefacing. I want to get into some of their beers, starting with that non-traditional one I mentioned above. The beer's name is Kuytie Pie, and that name is a pun which includes the beer style: a kuyt (which you may also see spelled "kuit" or "koyt"). A kuyt is a Dutch-based grainy beer going back to the 15th century. It is somewhat similar to the gruit, in that it has little-to-no hop presence. (For reference, I found this kuyt to be less odd that the single gruit I had earlier this year.) Getting back to the beer itself, it poured a slightly hazy pale gold, and was quite light overall, including in ABV (4.8%). As mentioned before, it was grainy, with a corn note being most prominent to me. This graininess, with just a hint of hop, lead off the tasting experience, while the middle was so mild that I equated it to seltzer water or club soda. That corn note came to me in the back of the drinking experience. It's a mild beer, overall, and while I appreciate trying a new style, I didn't feel the need to try this again or go out pursuing kuyts on a regular basis. The most apt descriptor I found for this beer was "completely inoffensive".

Next up is a fruit-based IPA called Fuzzy Scrumpit. This is officially called a white peach pink guava IPA, and pours a very hazy yellow color. The ale is tangy, invoking plenty of the fruit in the flavor profile. I found a tartness throughout, along with a mild hop bite at the very end, and a little bit of a funky note back there, too. A mild tartness rounded out this solid IPA loaded with tropical fruits.

Finally, Dole, which is an Imperial cherry Berlinerweisse that pours a peachy-gold color. Coming in at 10% ABV, the flavor notes are fairly straight-forward, most notably tart cherry (of course) and lemonade. The beer is fairly dry overall, which, with some of the fruitier notes, helps evoke a feeling of sparkling wine or champange. I enjoyed this, but it was fairly late in the visit, so some palate fatigue was starting to set in. If it's a regular offering, this is one I'd want to check out again early on in a visit.

I still have a couple of Collusion beers to discuss in detail, including the best of my visit, and a few that I'll just talk about briefly. That will be coming later this week.

As a programming note, tomorrow I will be releasing the livestream from Sunday night as the Tuesday video. It does include a beer review of Stone Brewing's excellent Xocoveza stout, but I will discuss more detail about the video when it is released tomorrow. See you then!