Collaboration advice

So me and two friends want to do a collaboration brew. Any tips on how to go about this? Do you recommend each person contributing to their strengths? Or finding a style and the just free talking what to do? Basically I have no idea how to collaborate and am just looking for any advice on what makes a successful collaboration

Thanks!

Good luck--unless everyone's willing to give up some of their own beliefs about the process, it may be difficult.

When you talk about each others' strengths, to what are you referring? Mashing, boil, fermenting--what? Would you mean by that that one would be in charge of mashing, another the boil, and so on?

Who will decide the recipe? Seems to me this enterprise--brewing--is partly about being able to try out one's ideas and theories.

Other than collaborating on the recipe, what do you think will be the outcome? I might think it would be interesting if you decided on a specific recipe then each of you brewed it separately.

Thanks, yeah I think we are all willing to give up beliefs about how we do things and use this as a learning process.

As far as strengths.. For example maybe I am the hophead while someone else is more into grains and another knows about grains more and the other is into interesting additions or yeast or something like that.

As far as the recipe I think it might be good to not try to experiment to much, not try to make a Flanders or something like that, but instead stick to something basic like a pale or IPA or stout and see how we can each contribute to it.

I was also thinking thinking that we could boil a pretty standard 5 gallon IPA or something and then split it up into thirds and take it home and dry hop or do whatever with the fermentation separately and see what happens. Maybe we'd end up with one super dry hopped IPA, a coconut IPA, and a gin oak chip infused IPA and compare. Perhaps even just make the the mash the same and see what we do with it, maybe add speciality grains or something like that.

Basically I have no idea but I feel like if we do this right it could be a great learning experience that creates some unique beers and I'm looking for any advice.

Thanks!

I have a different kind of take on this. If I were involved, I'd like to have the hophead (you!) show me how you do it. If I were weak on grains, then I'd want to have the guy who is best on that do it and show me how he does it.

In other words, I'd see this more as a learning experience than as a collaboration--though if you're having each work to his strength one would think that would produce a good beer....and along the way, each can learn how to strengthen areas in which they need improvement.

Just a thought or two....