A Little Confession to the Central Coast of CA

Last week a good chunk of our team headed up to California's beautiful central coast to support our new relationship with Central Coast Distributing in the area. Those of you living in San Luis Obispo, the northern parts of Santa Barbara, and sections of Monterey can look forward to starting to see more of our beer out your way.



In case you somehow missed it, we do have a love of wine culture here at The Bruery. It's pretty spectacular to see how different industries can cross-pollinate, and we love to get out to wine country to let our imagination loose and find inspiration for new ideas.
Apparently we even inspired a couple ideas for wines ourselves?



On our way up to our events last week, we took a couple breaks to check in on some friends, including those at Firestone Walker, Barton Family Wines, and Broken Earth Winery.



Though we expected to taste a few wine and beer samples, we did not expect to try pear cider and gin with the Barton family! It's always nice to know that we aren't the only one dabbling in other hobbies while we continue to innovate craft beer and how it's made.



While stopped at Firestone Walker, Brewmaster Matt Brynildson was kind enough to take a break to show Tyler the latest on their expansion. Cavernous fermenters? Check. Plenty of space to add additional packaging lines if they wanted? Check. A massive CIP? Check please. Last time we stopped by was during the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival in June, so we can't wait to see how the place has grown the time we swing by again. Thank you Matt for the refreshing Pivo Pils!



Our team was fully reunited at Dunbar Brewing in Rancho Santa Margarita where Chris showed us his small but mighty brewing set up and not so small bottle collection before we binged on tasty tacos from a local vendor paired with plenty of Or Xata. Big thanks to you fans who came out to show your Bruery love!

On our next day up we blanketed the coast in Bruery staff as we did ride-alongs about the area (that's where we hop in the car with a distributor "beer buddy" and meet the people who own accounts where our beer is sold). We get to know the distributor and the account that is selling our beer, understand their needs and expectations, while teaching them more about our brewery and beer. All around it's a three-part win/win/win.



And now for what we could call the most-fancy-pants part of our weekend. One of our highly anticipated beers, Confession, was brewed in collaboration with Fess Parker Winery. We were lucky enough to get to know the team at Fess Parker Winery via Benjamin Weiss, our Director of Marketing. Given how much we love wine, a collaboration seemed inevitable. We made a sour ale and added riesling grapes to create a beer that tastes like wine ... that tastes like beer that tastes like... you get the picture.



A Hoarders Society exclusive, we've been very excited to celebrate the release of this beer and the perfect opportunity came up at the Fess Parker Inn. The event featured four tastes of our beer, four tastes of Fess Parker's wines, and four delicious dishes to pair with both items from the kitchen of Petros. Tough job?

Thank you central coast for the warm welcome. We look forward to seeing more of you and your ostriches. You can see more pix of our trip over on our The Bruery Facebook page.