Catching Up With The Bruery – 2012 Numbers, Provisions Successor and More
We caught up with The Bruery of Placentia, CA to find out various items including their 2012 performance, the legacy of the Provisions name, anniversary plans and more. Hope you enjoy. Cheers!
The Full Pint: How were The Bruery’s 2012 numbers compared to 2011?
The Bruery: Our brewing numbers were way up, we brewed just over 10,000 bbls in 2012, but as we really began growing our barrel collection in 2012, our sales were only at a bit over half of that, the remainder being stored in oak for future releases. We hope to release a full 10,000 bbls in 2013, meaning a whole lot of barrel aged beer!
The Full Pint: Will any retired Bruery beers be brought back? Black Orchard, any of the Provision Series beers come to mind?
The Bruery: Nothing is planned for this, but you never know. We do plan on blending Mélange #1 again, but this was never a “retired” beer, just a beer that isn’t released very often.
The Full Pint: Does the Bruery plan on using The Provisions name or brand again?
The Bruery: The Bruery Provisions has been both a homebrew store and a bottle shop / tasting room. Both were exciting ventures that fed our hobbies of brewing beer and drinking beer, but ultimately both were set aside to focus on beer. There are no current plans on bringing the name back, we want to continue our focus on brewing beer. We’ll be keeping the “Provisions Series” of beers alive with a name change to the “Preservation Series” and the first release will be Imperial Loakal Red, a 12% ABV version of our popular OC only hoppy, oaky red ale.
The Full Pint: Last year you guys took a break from holding a 4th Anniversary Celebration. Will the Bruery be holding a 5th Anniversary Celebration this year?
The Bruery: Yes! It will be a return to the larger festival format that we’ve held in the past, but hopefully with a big emphasis on food pairings. The event is tentatively scheduled for May 18th.
The Full Pint: Tell us more about the e-commerce system you have moved to for retail operations?
The Bruery: We spend the past several months working with a web developer to create what we think is a really beautiful ecommerce site. While we legally can not ship beer out of state, we will begin shipping to anyone in California who’d like to buy our beer directly. There are still many spots in our home state where people have a hard time finding our beer and we hope that this helps fill the gaps. It will also be an opportunity for people in Northern California to get ahold of some of our local releases. On top of that, it will be a destination for our Reserve Society members to have an easier process for ordering beers and for people new to our beer to become members of our Preservation Society, which works like a traditional Beer of the Quarter club.
The Full Pint: Any local or national collaborations in the works? With what breweries?
The Bruery: Yes! We have a beer in the fermenter right now that we brewed with LA’s Beachwood BBQ & Brewing. It’s an imperial stout that we smoked with the three types of wood that they use for their bbq and then aged the beer on those same three types of wood. We’re hoping to release that in about a month. We’re also planning a national collaboration at the moment….
The Full Pint: How is the pilot program going?
The Bruery: Patrick is a mad scientist. Need we say more? Some incredibly experimental beers will be hitting our tasting room taps and hopefully some of them become larger releases.
The Full Pint: Any new markets outside of California planned?
The Bruery: Nope. We’re hoping to fill in some of the gaps that we have in California, but otherwise no market expansion.
The Full Pint: Will there be any successors to the Melange # series? If so what?
The Bruery: Our Hoarders Society will see a small release of Mélange #8 quite soon. It’s a blend of White Oak Sap and our Anniversary ale along with Geisha coffee from locally based Portola Coffee Lab.
