{"id":47483,"date":"2021-04-09T16:01:58","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T22:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ska-brewing-brings-lone-tree-brewing-beer-to-southwest-colorado\/"},"modified":"2021-04-09T22:01:58","modified_gmt":"2021-04-09T22:01:58","slug":"ska-brewing-brings-lone-tree-brewing-beer-to-southwest-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ska-brewing-brings-lone-tree-brewing-beer-to-southwest-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Ska Brewing brings Lone Tree Brewing beer to Southwest Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"From
From Left, Joe Hull of Ska Brewing Co., and Chris Gilmore and Jerry Siote of Lone Tree Brewing Co. collaborate on a beer in March 2020 at Ska Brewing Co. in Durango. After the festival for which that beer was made fell through, the two breweries instead formed a distribution partnership.<\/span>Courtesy of Ska Brewing Co.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

On March 11 and 12, 2020, representatives of Lone Tree Brewing Co. and Ska Brewing Co. met at the latter\u2019s Durango headquarters to brew a kettle-soured Berliner Weisse for the Collaboration Festival, a Denver-based event celebrating Colorado\u2019s craft beer scene. Like most of 2020\u2019s events, that festival was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the two breweries were able to find a different way to work together, in the form of a distribution partnership.<\/p>\n

Before the partnership formed, Lone Tree<\/a>\u2019s beer was distributed mostly in the corridors along interstates 25 and 70. The closest it got to Durango was 100 miles away in Montrose. Now, through Ska Brewing<\/a>\u2019s distribution arm, six packs of the south Denver metro area brewery\u2019s Lone Tree IPA, Mexican Lager, Strawberry Kiwi Blonde Ale, Red Ale, Peach Pale, Double IPA and spring-seasonal Pomegranate Wit, as well as mixed 12-packs are available in Durango, Telluride, Ouray and Ridgway.<\/p>\n

It was a natural fit, said Kristen Muraro, Ska\u2019s sales and marketing director. Both she and Lone Tree Brewing founder John Winter served on the board of directors of the Colorado Brewers Guild. The initial collaboration came at the suggestion of one of Ska\u2019s distribution reps who was a regular at Lone Tree\u2019s tasting room, she said.<\/p>\n

In terms of the beer now headed to Southwest Colorado, Dennis Stack, Lone Tree\u2019s director of sales and marketing, said his brewery is sending some styles Durango hasn\u2019t necessarily seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur portfolio of beers has a wide variety \u2013 we\u2019re not just IPA-heavy or lager-heavy. We brew a lot of different things, and our product mix on the Front Range is quite different from what we\u2019re seeing in that corner of the state,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In particular, the fruit-forward brews, such as the Strawberry Kiwi Blonde Ale and the Peach Pale, fill in some gaps in at least Ska\u2019s portfolio. Similarly, Lone Tree IPA is a bit different in that it has a juicy flavor that isn\u2019t as resinous or piney as many West Coast IPAs, but also isn\u2019t hazy like a New England IPA.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, there is at least one notable overlap between Ska and Lone Tree: Mexican lagers. Because many beer festivals lack a Mexican lager category, Mexican Logger and Lone Tree\u2019s Mexican Lager have rarely, if ever, competed against each other directly, but they have brought home similar hardware. In 2017, both won gold medals \u2013 Ska at the Los Angeles International Beer Competition, Lone Tree at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Both beers also took home silver at GABF in 2015.<\/p>\n

\u201cMexican lagers in general are getting a lot of press right now and growing in popularity, so we\u2019ll continue to see that category grow,\u201d Muraro said. \u201cI think there\u2019s room for both of ours. \u2026 I think we\u2019ve established ourselves well enough with our Mexican lager that it\u2019s going to do its thing, and they\u2019ve established themselves very well up in their area with fans of their Mexican lager.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Ska\u2019s version is seasonal, Lone Tree\u2019s Mexican Lager is available year round.<\/p>\n

Lone Tree\u2019s beer is available at 6th Street Liquors, Mac\u2019s Liquors, Skyridge Liquors, Wagon Wheel Liquors and W.J. Doyle in Durango. Muraro said Ska will look into distributing it in draft form to bars and restaurants as those businesses pick back up in the near future.<\/p>\n

As the pandemic comes to an end, the breweries are also looking forward to collaborating on a beer again, Stack said.<\/p>\n

Ska also distributes beer from Bristol Brewing Co., Bosque Brewing Co., La Cumbre Brewing Co., Left Hand Brewing Co., Marble Brewery, Stone Brewing Co., Sweetwater Brewing Co. and Telluride Brewing Co., in addition to spirits from Peach Street Distillers, CBD seltzers from Oh Hi Beverages, Fenceline Ciders and Ska\u2019s non-alcoholic Skagua.<\/p>\n

ngonzales@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

breweries make award-winning Mexican lagers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[431,582,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-47483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-business-general","tag-craft-beer","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47483"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=47483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}