Capital Region Launch Party

Big Ditch Brewing Company is expanding distribution to the Capital Region and kicking things off at The Ruck on August 11th at 6pm. Details below, full event info here.

We'll be taking over 5 taps, offering free samples, and putting some FREE FOOD (wings, sliders, pretzels and tots) out for everyone to enjoy. Along with Big Ditch's sales team, Head Brewer and Co-Owner Corey Catalano will be there to meet and greet (and drink some beers, of course).

Without further adieu. The Beer! Here is what will be available:

Hayburner American IPA - 7.2% ABV

Hayburner is a luscious and citrusy IPA, with primary notes of orange, melon, grapefruit, and a slightly earthy finish. It packs a firm bitterness but remains balanced by abundant late hop additions and a soft, airy malt base.

Dayburner Refreshing IPA - 4.9% ABV

Burning a day is a beautiful thing. That's the idea behind Dayburner, a refreshing all-season IPA that boasts a taste (and name) complementary to our flagship IPA. It has citrus flavor, delicious drinkability and a smooth finish suited for days you never want to end.

Cannon Call Double IPA - 8.4% ABV

Cannon Call is a New England Style double IPA with Mosaic, Nelson Sauvin, Idaho 7, and Simcoe hops to yield a tropical flavor explosion with notes of white grape and orange zest.

Excavator Brown Ale - 6.2% ABV

Excavator incorporates seven different malts to achieve a rich, yet smooth flavor and balance. It is highlighted by judicious amounts of chocolate malt, with a subtle, spicy finish from the use of flaked rye.

Dock Jams Sour Fruit Beer - 5% ABV

When you're ready to enjoy the warmer weather, this is the beer for you. Dock Jams is brewed with hibiscus flowers and New York State grape juice to be lightly tart with a big floral aroma and a delicious fruity finish. It looks like punch but drinks with much more complexity while remaining refreshing.

The New Brewery - Part II

Two weeks ago, we brewed our first batch of beer (Hayburner, of course) at our new production brewery on Oak Street in downtown Buffalo!

We told you a little bit about the history and reasoning behind this new brewery on a blog post that day and promised we’d share a little more about the brewery on canning day, two weeks later. That day is today!

After waiting for years to open a new brewery, it was important to us to be able to scale up our operation quickly. For that reason, we decided to work with equipment vendors we’ve worked with previously, which made the learning curve for making good beer a lot less steep. We went with a 40 barrel brewhouse along with 10 x 80 barrel fermenters from Criveller (in Niagara Falls, Canada). This brewhouse is twice the size of our existing brewery at Huron Street. The current capacity of the new brewery is larger than our existing brewery, and our canning line is faster as well, which means we can immediately more than double our output. All of the equipment we’ve purchased is improved over the equipment we have at Huron Street. These improvements will make our process more efficient, which will give us more beer to sell.

The new production brewery will be responsible for brewing and packaging all of the beer we sell in 12 ounce cans; beginning in August, if you’re drinking one of our beers out of a 12 ounce can, it probably came from Oak Street. Oh, but don’t expect that we’ll only be making the same products you can get from us now – there will definitely be some BIG new packages coming to our portfolio shortly. That’s a hint.

Meanwhile, Huron Street will be brewing and packaging Hayburner in kegs for all the bars and restaurants in the area. Thanks to all of our on-premise customers for the continued support! Huron Street will also be filling our 16 ounce limited release beers, as well as brewing lots and lots of pilot batch beers. There will be all sorts of experimentation happening at Huron Street soon – and perhaps we’ll even be brewing some “beyond” beers as well. That’s another hint.

Another thing NOT to expect – that we’ll only be selling beer in the same places we’ve been selling the past few years. We expanded our sales through the Finger Lakes last year, started selling a lot more beer in Central NY recently, and will be expanding into the Capital Region of NY very shortly. We’ve hired some great new salespeople to help us with this – hi Ben K, Jess B, and Matty J! And that’s just the beginning.  For years our customers have been asking us to sell our beer outside of New York state, and we’re finally ready to make it happen – very, very soon.

Perhaps most importantly, a new brewery needs brewers to make the beer, and we’ve hired an incredible collection of amazing brewers who have come to us both from within the brewing industry and from outside of it as well.  Many of our existing brewers have been promoted through this process. We’ll even be shutting down 3rd shift (the overnight shift) for the first time since 2016 to focus more on innovation. Congratulations to our entire brewery staff and thank you for working under very stressful conditions over the last several years – we are all looking forward to tasting the beers you make for us!

Big Ditch Brewing Company is super energized for this new brewery and the next phase of our growth. Thanks again to our loyal customers for supporting us for the last 7+ years! We believe deeply in our hearts that Buffalo is the best place to get a beer anywhere in the world and we work hard every day to make you proud. Cheers!

#Celebrate – we’ve got ourselves a brand new brewery

Today is the day we are excitedly brewing the first batch of beer at our new production brewery on Oak Street in downtown Buffalo.

(To no one’s surprise, the beer is Hayburner.)

This is a very exciting moment for us. We’ve been limited in production capacity for at least 4 years now. This means that we haven’t been able to make all the beers we want to make or sell beers in all the places we want to sell beer. This also usually means that during the last week of June, right before July 4th, we run out of beer and then spend the rest of the summer catching up. If you’re keeping track – that’s this week. It’s been a really crazy week!

This should be an exciting moment for our readers as well – since you’re about to get more beer from us!

The new brewery has about 20,000 barrels of production capacity. This brewery will more than double our current production capacity. We’ll cover the details of the new brewery and what we’re planning to use it for in another upcoming blog post. In this post, we want to talk about how we got here. Why did we open this brewery?

Let’s go back to 2018. This was our first full year selling beer in cans in both Buffalo and Rochester. We had already been running a three-shift operation for more than two years. Our production volume had doubled the previous three years and in 2018 it grew by another 50%. 2018 was the first year we frequently ran out of beer. We just could not keep up.

This was the year we began to plan out opening a new production brewery.

We spent the balance of that year getting an idea of how big we wanted our brewery to be and roughly outlined the design. Working closely with our co-owner Paul and the team at Iskalo Development (link), a site was identified, and we spent 2019 providing definition around the rough outline of our design. With the design complete and with the site and approvals in-hand, we were looking forward to start building the project in 2020. This culminated in a March 2020 press release announcing our plans to open a Destination brewery at 6700 Transit Road. The plans for this brewery included everything we could have wanted from a production brewery and tap room. We were beyond ecstatic to get started.

Of course, we all knew what came next in 2020. While we remain committed to proceeding with completion of the Transit Road project, as it is an integral part of our long-term plans, it is still delayed until such time as impacts related to the pandemic, such as labor shortages and increases in material costs and availability, subside.

With the Transit Road project “on-hold”, we began considering alternatives to boost our capacity. This process continued through August 2021. During this time, we investigated contract brewing options and purchasing other breweries. Some of you may have even heard rumors about breweries we were thinking about buying.  We found that these options were just way too expensive or logistically not feasible. We were frustrated.

Out of these frustrations, however, came a revelation – ”What if we just built another brewery of our own, similarly sized but upgraded, to give us the room to continue to grow while we sort out the Transit Road situation?” We crunched the numbers and found that this was actually the least expensive option that would give us the most capacity and flexibility for growth. Iskalo Development had open warehouse space at 101 Oak Street right down the road (literally four blocks away) from our current facility, which was perfect.

By the end of August, we agreed in principle on the project and announced the plans in December (link).

The project proceeded swiftly, taking a little more than 10 months to complete.  We are really happy with the results. As an engineer, I’ve never worked on a project that came together so quickly yet is so well designed. I honestly cannot wait to make beer with this brewery – which is happening as we speak!

Perhaps most importantly, we’ve hired several new brewers to work at the new brewery, and these amazing and talented individuals are going to make our beer better than ever.

The first canning run is in a few weeks. At that time, we’ll share details with you about the new brewery, our new employees, and tease you with some news about what we plan to do with all these new toys. (The equipment, not the brewers, of course…)

Thanks as always for your support in helping us get here. Cheers!

Triple Can Release Friday July, 1st

TRIPLE CAN RELEASE FRIDAY, JULY 1ST!

You read that right. Triple. Trio. Triad. We're dropping THREE beers on Friday, 7/1 to keep your fridges and coolers stocked for the long weekend.

DDH HAYBURNER - It's back! This double dry-hopped version of our flagship American IPA features even more bold citrus, stone fruit, and dank hop flavor and aroma for a more intense hop experience. Yet, this beer remains as drinkable as the original. 7.2% ABV.

A MILLION BALLOONS - Colorful, light, and fun - this sour fruit beer is an adventure in a glass. A Million Balloons is brewed with loads of blueberries and peaches over a base of oats and milk sugar. 5.2% ABV.

BEER THAT TASTES LIKE BEER: HEFEWEIZEN - Hefeweizen is a German-style wheat beer that features flavors of banana bread, bubblegum and clove. This style is wonderfully complex from the use of German yeast, yet deliciously refreshing on a warm day. 5% ABV.

Big Ditch Summer Run Series

UPDATE: The first run will now be June 27th. The rest of the runs remain unchanged.

Introducing the Big Ditch Summer Run Series. Join us and our friends from Next Level Running on the 3rd Monday of June, July and August for a group run followed by beer and food at the taproom. All runners welcome, go at your own pace!

- Runs start/end at Big Ditch Brewing Company.
- Runs start at 6:00pm. No pre-registration. Just show up, sign in, and be ready to go at 6:00.
- Melina from Next Level Running will lead the group runs.
- There will be a 3 mile and 4 mile route planned each week.
- Route maps will be provided.
- We'll have water ready for you when you get back so you can hydrate before moving on to celebratory beers.
- The run is free to attend and open to all types of runners. Go at your own pace!
- Beer and food specials for runners each week after the run.