Craft Brewers Conference

Tyler, Rachel, Jonas and I got back on Saturday from the Craft Brewers Conference in Boston where we had a productive and fun time.

This is my third conference and the function of this conference seems to change every year for me. The first year, I was looking for information on how to start my brewery, and focused on the educational aspects as well as getting to know equipment suppliers. I quickly found out when talking to equipment suppliers that new equipment would mostly be out of my reach. At this first conference (in Austin, TX), I noticed how friendly everyone was to each other in this industry and this made me all the more excited to start a brewery and be a part of this family.

My second conference in San Diego, CA came about a month after our first batch, and a week before we sold our first case of beer. (Speaking of which, today is our first anniversary of selling our first case of beer to Hollingshead Deli in Orange, CA. I'll have to stop by Hollingshead's today, have a beer, and thank the Hollingshead family for all that they've done for us.) My second conference came at a time when Tyler was the only employee. We came to the conference to learn as much as we could about the industry as well as try to let our industry know we existed. We donated 12 cases of beer to the conference, and a case or two luckily ended up at the Brewery Owners / CEO Reception, where Greg Koch and Steve Wagner from Stone Brewing Co. first tried our beer. This was the starting point of Stone distributing our beers in Southern California. No one had heard of us, and many were skeptical that we'd be in business a year from then.

Things were a bit different at this year's Craft Brewers Conference. This conference I focused on making and strengthening relationships with our suppliers, fellow brewers, our distributors, and distributors we'd like to have on our team. We also focused on drinking the best beer the Northeast has to offer, something we did quite well I might add! The educational components of the Craft Brewers Conference were a bit lower of a priority this year than the previous two years, but collectively we went to most of the seminars and learned some new things.

Tyler flew the redeye and went to the two day MBAA yeast seminar, where he had the chance to make friends with and pick the brains of some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry. He also discovered new quality assurance procedures which require new pieces of lab equipment that we clearly can't afford right now. Maybe for Christmas, Tyler!

On Saturday we checked out downtown Boston and visited our friend Andrew at the Jamaica Plain Sam Adams brewery. Andrew gave us a great tour, and then drove us to a beer store where we stocked up on East Coast beers, and then drove us back to our hotel. What a great guy-- thanks Andrew! We hope you'll visit Southern California soon.

The CBC is a great place to make friends who share the same passion for craft beer that we do, and it's a lot of fun being a part of this large family. I'm looking forward to the next CBC in Chicago!

I Am a Craft Brewer

I Am a Craft Brewer debuted at the Craft Brewers Conference this week, and I had a small part in it. Cheers to Stone Brewing and Redtail Media, it's a pretty remarkable video. If you haven't seen it already, you need to check this out:



I Am A Craft Brewer from I Am A Craft Brewer on Vimeo.

Beer Geek Show & Tell this Saturday!

For those of you who've been to a past Show-and-Tell, you know what to do. For those who haven't, Beer Geek Show-and-Tell is where we invite everyone to bring in one bomber/750ml/ 2-12oz bottles of special craft/exceptional home brewed beer to share. And by share we mean having the beer served by the tasting room staff-please don't just bring it for everyone just to look at and drool, that's not nice. Only those who bring beer can partake in the sharing. And, of course, we'll share some fun stuff as well! The tasting room will be open from 12-6p as usual.

See you there!

11 Months In Business

I thought I'd attempt to write a new blog entry, seeing as how it's been a few months since I've written anything of substance on here. Our anniversary is coming up and this is a good opportunity to think back to where we were only 11 months ago. We sold our first case of beer to Hollingshead's Deli on April 28th, 2008, so I've decided to roll over our anniversary date to the month of May. Close enough, right? Last night Tyler, Rachel, Jonas, Jay and I sampled all of the barrels of our anniversary beer, picking out the most exceptional barrels for the single barrel versions of Papier. I couldn't help but feel a little sentimental that we were tasting our fifth batch of beer brewed last April, when things were vastly different than they are today.

In the beginning, I wondered how we were going to sell 15 bbl (465 gallons) of beer, the smallest volume we typically produce of any single batch. Tyler and I were the only people working here, and we brewed the beer, sold the beer, and I attempted to run a business. Within a few weeks of our first releases sitting on store shelves, we received complaints of over carbonation. Luckily, we were a new brewery, and people drank the beer anyway and understood we didn't really know what we were doing at this point. I bought back beer from places that weren't selling it well. I'm still sitting on 30 cases of grossly over carbonated Black Orchard and waiting for a great idea on what to do with it. A not so great idea was bobbling for apples in Black Orchard, which we attempted on Halloween.

In June, Stone Brewing Co. started distributing our beer in Southern California, which is one of those events that made my life a lot easier and gave us the opportunity to grow quickly. Steve, Greg and Arlan recognized we are making great beer and I recognized I cannot do everything and do it well. I could now see it was possible to sell 15 BBL batches of beer.

In September, we opened our tasting room, which has wildly exceeded my expectations. I expected the tasting room to be a place where we'd get the occasional visitor wanting to check out our brewery. It has become a North Orange County attraction, and we recently hired Stef, Tasting Room Manager, and James, to run the tasting room.

Our beers were distributed exclusively in Southern California until November, when I decided to branch out to other states. Stone was doing a great job for us in Southern California, but we had extra capacity and I felt it was important to build ourselves in other markets. Over the past 6 months, we've partnered with the best distributors in states that have an exceptional beer culture. We're now in Oregon, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Northern California, and will soon be in Arizona and New Jersey.

The Bruery family continues to grow. My wife Rachel joined us full time in September, and Jonas joined the team in December to help brew and handle our expanding distribution. Bryan joined in January to spread the word of our beers in Southern California. Jay will shortly join us full time as assistant brewer as our production needs increase. Ben, who once helped us brew, is now working with us as our marketing director. My brother Chris is working in Portland, Oregon to build our account base there.

We're currently undergoing a major expansion, bringing our fermentation capacity from 75 BBL to 210 BBL. The work is almost complete and we're prepared to fill the new fermenters in the next two weeks. The fermenters couldn't have come at a better time-- we're almost out of beer and struggling to keep up with demand. In the next few months, we'll also be adding a faster bottling line.

In another 11 months, I wonder where we'll be. I honestly have no idea. Maybe we'll have maxed out our fermentation capacity and trying to fit more fermenters in our now cramped space. Perhaps we'll be constructing a new brewery. Whatever the future brings, we know it'll be shaped by our hard work and high expectations. Thanks for supporting us!

Follow @TheBruery on Twitter!

We've welcomed ourselves to 2009 by extending our blogging to Twitter!  Start following TheBruery today and whether it be brewing Saison Rue, stocking the shelves of BevMo or concocting a brand new recipe for you all to enjoy, you will always know what's happening.  Once we've accumulated enough followers, we'll also send out announcements through Twitter, so those who follow us closely will be the first to know about special events or limited releases and be able to get in on them before everyone else.  

Go to www.twitter.com/thebruery or search for @TheBruery on your twitter account and start following us one tweet at a time.

Thanks for celebrating with us!

As many of you know, this past weekend we had the pleasure of hosting our St. Veronus Celebration, which was our Belgian spin on the usual St. Patrick's Day festivities.  We had some fantastic treats and even better Belgian music (which came in quite the variety)!  Most importantly though, we had the opportunity to share a few new beers with you!  

It was a great time and we just want to say thanks!  If you were able to make it, we hope you had a good time and enjoyed our latest offerings in addition to our regular line up.  Here are a few pictures of the event.

We loaded up our new taps for the occasion!

Getting the place ready for the event.

Enjoying the festivities.  

And of course, the beer.  Here's a glass of White Zin, released this weekend.

Thanks again, and we'll see you soon!

Batch#50 Aging Away

We just put Batch#50 in its home for the next two to three years!

White Zin - The Beginning

Here is Jay and I blending the White Zin into our bright tank. This beer was born from a need to top off a partially filled barrel of our Zin-Beer and good timing. A batch of Lambic was conditioning in the fermenter at the time and the thought of the two being married together put a smile on our face. This is an amazing beer, one of my favorites!

Special Release Beers for our St. Veronus Celebration!

Our St. Veronus Celebration is almost here!  As promised we'll be releasing some new beers for the event, and oh man are they exciting!

First, Melange #3 is a complex blend of three unreleased bourbon barrel aged beers, including our Black Tuesday Imperial Stout, White Oak Wheat Wine, and Papier, our 1st Anniversary beer (an Old Ale).  Weighing in at 15% ABV, and layered with flavor, this is a special release you won't want to miss.  Some of you may have had the opportunity to sample this one at the Tasting Room, and now you can come and fully enjoy it.

Another beer we'll be premiering is our Cuvee Jeune.  This is a Young American Wild Ale fermented with traditional Lambic flora and then aged in Chardonnay barrels, finishing at approximately 6.5% ABV.

Last but not least, we'll be serving White Zin.  Nope, not the wine.  It's a beer for which we've blended that Cuvee Juene with our Zinbier, a Belgian blonde fermented with almost 1000 lbs of zinfandel grapes.  It's approximately 7.5% ABV and will be available for the first time this weekend.

Hopefully this news has you even more excited for this weekend's event, I know we sure are!  See you there!

Brewing Batch #50

Last week we were lucky enough to meet Al Buck and his wife Nina, winner of our Batch #50 competition. They flew in from New Jersey to help, err…make sure we didn’t screw up his recipe too badly when it came time to brew his Gueuze. We put him to work early Thursday morning mashing in the thickest mash we have ever done at the brewery. His recipe called for using a turbid mash which meant Al had a long day of mixing this insanely thick mixture of un-malted wheat and barley, which isn’t easy, believe me! Hopefully, we came close enough to his original recipe; I can only hope that our version turns out as good as his, which is amazing to say the least! After about a 12 hour brew day (that’s including clean-up) his beer was in the fermenter pitched with yeast and bacteria that he provided himself. He keeps all these cool yeasts and bacteria banked at his house! The next night I had the privilege to hang out with Al and Nina while drinking some of his amazing homebrew and talking yeast; he is a very knowledgeable guy and I love learning new things about brewing! It was a pleasure meeting both of them and I hope they can make it out next year (or sooner) to help us brew the second part of his recipe (it’s a blend of two and one year old lambic.)

 

Thanks Al and Nina, I had fun brewing and drinking some great beer with you over the past few days!

Here's Al mashing in his recipe on our brewhouse