(Escondido, CA) – Stone Brewing announced the new project on its blog yesterday.

The last two springs, Stone has held an AHA rally and homebrewing competition in which it selects a winning recipe to be packaged as a beer in its Collaboration Series. Last year, Ken Schmidt won the title with his Aloha Plenty Porter, a beer that was later brewed to scale by himself, the Stone team and Maui Brewing. On Friday, Stone shared the collaborating team for this year’s winning recipe.

Meet Kelsey McNair, a highly decorated champion homebrewer representing the QUAFF homebrew club in San Diego. Stone announced the victory back in March for his hoppy 4.3% ABV “West Coast Bitter.” Perhaps even more remarkable than that victory is McNair’s recent win at the National Homebrewers Conference. His Imperial IPA beat out 386 other entries on the way to a gold medal.

Per the Stone blog, for the upcoming collaboration brew, McNair selected Ballast Point Brewing‘s Colby Chandler to complete the brewing team. Ballast Point brews a 3.5% ABV American Pale Ale called Even Keel that is well-regarded so Chandler’s expertise should come in pretty handy on this project.

Stone notes, “Adding to the excitement, we’re also pleased to announce that West Coast Bitter will be Stone’s official entry at the Great American Beer Fest’s Pro-Am Competition! The Pro-Am Competition allows breweries and homebrewers from all over the country to collaborate on recipes and see how they stack up on craft beer’s biggest stage.”

Brew Day is on July 12th so expect to find this on shelves late this summer.