Dear Reserve Society Members,
I'd like to sincerely apologize for the very long lines and disorganization of yesterday. Everyone at The Bruery agrees with the sentiments that more should have been done to accommodate the very large crowd.
When I woke up yesterday, I felt like it was going to be a great day for The Bruery. My soon-to-be-born daughter Charlotte hadn't forced my wife into labor, so I was actually going to make it to the largest party we've ever put on. I was up especially early so I could get a head start on the day, and I felt that we were generally well prepared. Then the party started.
While we were planning this event, we expected approximately 1,000 guests after receiving around 1,300 RSVP's. We checked in 997 people, so I'm happy to report this prediction was correct! We chose to have the event at The Phoenix Club because our small brewery can no longer handle the size of these events-- we'd need to have 5 or 6 sessions at this point. As far as check-in goes, we needed a method where multiple people wouldn't be able to check in under the same name, so having multiple lists of members printed out might have resulted in this happening. Using our database to check people in helped avoid this problem, but the process did take longer than it should have. With regard to the amount of beer stations, I felt that with ample room, lines would move more efficiently than they do normally at our brewery, and thought having three separate stations (with the truck station being the equivalent of 4 stations) would be sufficient. In retrospect, I was way off the mark and I feel like beating my head against the wall for not anticipating this. Not to make excuses, but we've all been under a lot of pressure lately with our latest expansion (which will almost double our capacity), and I've been distracted by thoughts of having to take care of another human being.
As we plan for our next big event, our Anniversary party, we are keeping track of everything that needs to change from this event. You can expect to see paper tickets for any event with more than 400 attendees. We will refine our estimates to determine how many beer stations and bartenders we'll require (one station per 100 guests for a 3 hour event). While I think our draft truck is remarkably cool, it didn't work out to be the equivalent of 4 stations that I was anticipating. We'll also have to work with our friends who run these fantastic food trucks to see what can be done on their end to speed the process. We'd love to get Beachwood BBQ back as well!
We will attempt to make this up to you throughout the year and I hope we can quickly convince you that you made a great choice by being a Reserve Society member. For starters, one project we're working on that will start in February is having more frequent Reserve Society gatherings. These will take place on a Saturday starting around noon and finishing around 3:30 PM before our tasting room opens to the general public. We might feature beers from our Nano series, pull a special keg from the archive, and have some sort of educational component. We'll have some sort of delicious food available, and we'll encourage you to bring bottles to share if you're so inclined. Since these events will happen at our brewery, we will have to limit the number of attendees. I anticipate receiving a good amount of flack from those who aren't able to RSVP in time! Oh well, they'll be fun events and they'll happen regularly. Perhaps we can call them "Clusterfork" parties?
We also have a lot of great beers in the pipeline that I hope you'll enjoy! Everyone at The Bruery would like to wish you a safe, healthy, and beer filled 2011!
Cheers,
Patrick Rue
The Bruery
Every December, not only do I add on a year to my age (I was born December 28th), I add one on to my years here at The Bruery. Three years ago I started working here while finishing my Communications degree at California State University Fullerton. Three years ago to this date Patrick and I just finished placing the brew-house equipment in its current place. It's kind of fitting that exactly three years later I am now getting ready to move some of that equipment to make room for more tanks. For those of you who have been to our brewery, you will notice some big changes coming in the new year. Our 30 barrel bright tank will be moving almost up against the tasting room bar along with a new 60 barrel bright tank right next to it. In its place we plan on installing one 30 barrel fermentor with another new 30 barrel fermentor not too far away from it. On top of all of that, we plan on placing a new 45 barrel fermentor in there as well! To help make room for the bright tanks and our new 45 barrel hot liquor tank, the whirlpool vessel that so many of you lean on during tasting room hours will be moving between the mash/lauter tun and boil kettle. We should be getting these tanks in early January so you’ll probably see me in the brewery looking more like a contractor than a brewer in the next month or so. As I am writing this I am just thinking about all the stuff that has to be done in the next thirty days and I can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed and scared, but this is what I love doing, I get the chance to redo parts of the brewery and make it so much easier for the brewers to do their jobs.
It's kind of weird that I was doing the same thing three years ago. I didn’t have the knowledge back then that I do now but I'll probably say the same exact thing three years from now. Three years ago I was worrying about setting up our brew-house procedures and placing equipment so it couldn't limit us in anyway (I guess I didn't do that good of a job!). Now I’m looking at charts, graphs and layouts worrying about pipe capacities in gallons per minute, effectively heating our HL tank without a boiler, shutting down production to modify our current glycol piping and hiring two new people to help us package our beer once these new tanks are up and running. So if you see me stressed out at The Bruery, it’s because I am! The sooner I can get these tanks up and running, the sooner we can make more beer!
Well what can we say? This year's release party somehow ran without any faults. Of course there was a debacle with the websales for tickets and we had our server crash the first day, but once the actual day arrived, everything went great.
