Portal 2 With Delicious Collaboration Beers

My good buddy Paul has been recommending that we play Portal 2 for a long time, and a few nights ago, we finally got around to it. Portal 2 involves guiding a robot through various courses, having only the ability to move around and create portals in order to get around obstacles. It is a game of logic, and its two-player cooperative mode forces players to plan carefully in order to successfully navigate each level.

Paul had the wonderful idea of pairing a game that hinges on collaboration with a couple of beers that are collaborative efforts between breweries. As of recently, the craft beer industry has been cranking out beers like this, where two or more breweries get together and combine their skills to make special one-off products. The first we opened was Brux, a collaboration between two of California's most influential breweries.

Brewed by Sierra Nevada and Russian River Brewing, Brux is a Belgian-style farmhouse ale. It is pale in color and effervescent, with a funky, subtly fruity nose. It tastes of pepper and citrus fruit, with a hint of peach. It finishes dry, with lingering grassy notes.

The second beer Paul brought was Shewolf India Pale Ale, a collaboration between Half Acre and Three Floyds. Shewolf features fruity hoppiness in abundance. It tastes strongly of grapefruit with some tropical fruit notes in the background. Both Shewolf and Brux made great companions for Portal 2. While the breweries' collaborations had much better results than Paul's and mine did when it came to advancing quickly through the game together, the reasonably strong beers made it more fun for us to yell at each other.