It’s easy to be a bit cynical about brand collaborations. Sometimes they feel like a stroke of genius; other times, gimmicky or like there are too many. The Dolce and Gabbana x Smeg toaster is still on sale in Aotearoa for a cool $1400, and you could make your toast in a Gucci x Adidas tracksuit wearing Manolo Blahnik bedazzled Birkenstocks. And who could forget the frenzy when Whittaker’s and Lewis Road Creamery launched their chocolate milk, which promptly sold out making national headlines?

Craft breweries often collaborate with each other in an attempt to probably sneakily look at each other’s ingredients and techniques, and then share in the doubled-audience from a marketing perspective for the resulting collaboration brew. “I hate meaningless collaborations,” declares Pete Gillespie, co-founder of Garage Project, the Aro Valley darlings of craft beer. But when they work, they really do work - whether it be an element of surprise, or a meeting of minds that just makes sense.

Both are key to the new collab between Garage Project and Duck Island Ice Cream, two local brands with cult followings. GP approached the Hamilton ice cream business earlier this year to talk about two collaboration beers, which was, for Gillespie, a no-brainer. “We just love their ice cream.” 

Beyond that, he finds when brand values align, it can be the most rewarding process where everyone learns a ton, and war stories are swapped about being a small, creative business in Aotearoa. Other collabs have included with local brands Twenty-seven Names, Peckham's Cider and Fix & Fogg. It always pushes them when they collaborate with companies outside of brewing, just to think about things differently.

Duck Island’s popular toasted marshmallow flavour has a luscious texture thanks to the kilograms of homemade marshmallow, which are flame-torched before mixing straight into the ice cream base. It’s a technique Garage Project “completely copied” for the Toasted Marshmallow Stout, where 50kgs of the aforementioned flame-torched marshmallow went directly into the boil, to make a dessert beer that Gillespie describes as “absolutely f…ing delicious.”

With the addition of lactose, a now commonplace ingredient in craft brewing for mouthfeel and creaminess, the stout alongside the Lemon Poppyseed Kettle Sour are fun desserts in beer form, based on Duck Island ice creams, and will be the life of the parties being held simultaneously at Garage Project’s Aro Valley and Kingsland tap rooms on December 3, to celebrate the collaboration.

For the ice cream superstars from Hamilton East, who have expanded to ‘scoop shops’ stores in Cuba Street, Newmarket, Ponsonby, and now Takapuna, it was an honour to be approached by Garage Project about a collaboration beer. “The chance to drink a Duck Island beer after work was way too exciting for the team,” says Cam Farmilo, one of Duck Island’s founders.

Duck Island came about as a side project for Farmilo and his co-founders, while operating their former restaurant Chim Choo Ree, and having far too much fun coming up with interesting flavours. When their Roasted White Chocolate and Miso flavour won a national artisan award, things really kicked off. “It got us stocked into Farro Fresh, and forced us to really get our act together in terms of packaging and production.” 

The jump from working in a restaurant kitchen to an office slinging ice cream has been a bit of a jump for Cam, but with the team having young families the hours are much friendlier, and there is still the opportunity to jump onto the factory floor. “We are still small batch, but on a big scale”, which is to say they are still making the ice creams on a 20 litre machine, because something of the flavour and magic is lost when using larger scale production equipment. 

That commitment to process and flavour certainly appealed to GP, who took it upon themselves to visit the store and try every single flavour in the pursuit of what would work best in beer form. “We stood there with our little spoons, literally trying every flavour”, before taking tubs back to the team at HQ and settling on the Toasted Marshmallow and Lemon Poppyseed. Tough gig.

• The Garage Project x Duck Island collaboration beers launch on November 29, and to celebrate, Ice Cream Parties are happening at the Garage Project Aro Valley and Kingsland tap rooms on Saturday December 3. These will include the special beers, spiders and beer floats, hot fruit pies with ice cream and more.