It has obviously been quite busy month for us! Reaction to the opening of our tap room has been tremendous, and we thank all of you that have stopped by for a beer. We have several updates for you concerning how things have been going and upcoming news:
1) Beer.
We opened our tap room with plans to have 8 to 12 beers on tap at all times. Due to overwhelming demand, we have found that occasionally the number may drop a little bit lower. We are constantly rotating our selection of beers and adding on beers from other local breweries. We’re also adding brewers to help us make more. We hired Kim and Brett about a month ago; they are currently in training and picking things up pretty quickly. We’re also looking to hire another full time brewer and will probably hire a few more assistants before the end of the summer. The brewers will be working around the clock to brew as much as possible over the coming weeks and months, with a mix of existing favorites, new seasonals and limited releases. Please remember - it takes time to make good beer!
New brewers!
2) Cans. We teased a picture of Corey with Rudy, CBW’s head brewer, making a beer together in our brewery, about a month ago. That was the beginning of a collaboration we had been discussing for several months with the Buffalo Bisons. They had an idea to create a collaborative mixed pack between several different breweries in the same pack, which hadn’t happened almost anywhere else in the country to our knowledge. The mixed pack would be released at the ballpark and also at Consumer’s Beverages, and would be filled with summery, light beers. After some discussion, it was decided that the participating breweries would be us, Resurgence, and CBW, with the beers featured as Low Bridge (our hoppy golden ale), Summer Saison by Resurgence, and a one off IPA by CBW called, of course, “An IPA”. CBW needed a place to brew the 20 barrel batch of beer, so of course, we volunteered to help. Rudy created the recipe and we helped CBW scale it up and brew it at our brewery. The mixed three pack will be out this week. And it looks awesome.
BOOM
3) Tours. With all the commotion of opening the tap room, we put brewery tours on hold for a little while, but we’re working on starting them up again. In the meantime, there are some ground rules for groups showing up that are visiting our brewery as part of a large group:
- We welcome groups to come visit our brewery and tap room. However, if your group is larger than 12 people, please call 854-5050 no less than 72 hours before your arrival as we need to staff properly to accommodate large groups. We reserve the right to deny entry to unscheduled groups if we don’t have sufficient space or staff to comfortably accommodate the group.
- After a long day of visiting breweries and trying many beers, it’s likely that some of the members of your party might be a little buzzed up. Which is okay. However, our policy, in accordance with the State Liquor Authority, is to deny alcohol service to visibly intoxicated patrons. So, if any of the members of your party is visibly intoxicated, please, do not try to bring them into our facility. If your party attempts to bring an intoxicated guest in, we reserve the right to disallow the entire party in.
4) July 4th is this Saturday, and we’ll be closed that day to provide a much needed day of rest for our staff. We’ll be open until midnight on July 3rd, so be sure to stop in a grab a growler for Independence Day festivities.
5) Menu Specials. Chef Mike will be whipping up a bunch of cool food specials in the next few weeks. Last week we featured a Chorizo Burger, Red Pepper and Smoked Sausage Mac n Cheese, and BBQ Chicken flatbreads. We’ll have more specials coming this week – and maybe even some special beers to pair with the food…?
Last week's special: BBQ Chicken Flatbread with chipotle cream cheese and fresh jalapeno
6) Sundays and Lunches. We get these questions all the time, and we’re working on that too. We’re adding staff to be able to open on Sundays and expect we can open on Sunday sometime later this summer. Lunches will take a little longer. We’ll be sure to let you know.
As always, follow us on social media for the latest updates: facebook.com/bigditchbrewing, twitter.com/bigditchbrewing. Have a great summer!