Grimm in California?

Doubt you would've seen much BA Double Negative out here (though there was some). But yeah, have seen Grimm's stuff in SD at Bine & Vine and Best Damn Beer Shop (and I'm sure it's elsewhere too).

 

Take your air quotes and stick em where the sun don't shine.

"And while it’s perhaps not absolutely necessary for them to be present, Grimm’s care for their beer, their appetite for having the beer taste just as they intended, leads them to make the trek each time. “We’re trying to make the beer we want to make, so we’re there every time, testing throughout the process to ensure our beer tastes the way we want it to taste.”

 

LOL. Ok. It isn't like the breweries are down the street from them. At the rate they're putting it out beer it would be impossible for them to be "here every time, testing throughout the process". You can believe whatever you want though. The beer is constantly being made at two different sites while they reside in another. A beer ferments in 10 days or so and then dry hopped. And then transferred for carbonation. And then packaged. And then packed on to trucks. I'd love to hear that they are there for all of that. I really would. It just isn't the norm for people who contract out their brews. And they're paying a lot of pointless Brooklyn rent and countless flights/gas if they only spend 2 days a week there. Add 4 flights to the brewery for every batch and suddenly your batch cost is pretty fucking high. Like I said, I have doubt about the statement you quoted. Most of the time with these boutique "brewers" (air quotes just for you) they don't even scale the recipe up themselves. They lean on the brewers to do that, which is smart, since they are the pros. But that is a different topic. I hear Grimm is working on building their own spot. I'll give them more attention at that point. Until then, more for you guys. Nothing personal. It's how I feel about all contract stuff.

 

Somebody pointed me to this thread.

Hi Sebowski. My kneejerk response is just to say pffft U MAD. But you're right that some "gypsy" brewers are full of shit, so I get it and actually for the most part agree with you.

Anyway we've always been transparent about how we work. We brew in two places, and to date we've been physically present every single time we make wort. We spend one week out of every month at our partner brewery in Virginia (we stay with family in the area), and our other partner brewery is on Staten Island so it's a 15 minute drive from our apartment. We oversee all brew days, to the point where we bring and calibrate our own pH meter, etc. It's not like we can take a plane because for most of our trips we have to bring buckets of our microbes to pitch -- we grow most sour starters at home. Four hour drive down on sunday night, work all week, four hour drive back up friday evening. NBD.

We work with really quality people so we do trust them with following our cellarmanship instructions. We have very precise cellar calendars with temperature schedules, when and how to dry hop, drop trub, cold crash, drop yeast, cold condition, carb volumes, etc. Our friends are perfectly capable of following cellarmanship processes; they know what's up.

Like a lot of small breweries, we use a mobile bottler and canner. They are good at their jobs.

We order 100% of our own ingredients and write all recipes including not just ingredients but water treatments and processes. We don't "scale up" recipes; we think in bbls and degrees plato, not gallons and specific gravity. Most of our beers are one-offs so we write between one and three new recipes per month, design labels, etc.

We actually own three of our own fermentation tanks that reside in one of our partner breweries, and bought one of the fermenters at the other brewery. We purchased our own stainless, pump, hoses, barrels, etc etc for brewing wild beers so we could make them without putting our partner's stainless at risk -- we're literally using our own equipment a lot of the time.

If we were hands off, would we be able to medal at GABF two years running with the same beer brewed at two different breweries? Would we be able to place 2 DIPAs in the top four of a blind tasting of 115 of the best and freshest? Nope.

To the OP @raynmoon -- We send a small amount of beer to Shelton Brothers, and they distribute it to various states in small amounts. We only give them beers with a longer shelf life though, and keep the IPA's close to home to maintain freshness. I don't see us ever sending hoppy stuff to CA unless it's sour.

 

This is why craft brewing is fascinating to me. The ability to create something tangible (and tasty) and spread it coast to coast without permanent stewardship of the property where the beer is brewed? Quite excellent. BTW Grimm dude, your 5 Ws and H explanation of the contract process was extremely cogent.

The ability of craft brewers to consistently tear down the veil between producer and consumer is definitely one of the reasons why I enjoy craft beer.

 

I know you guys are very limited release, but when do you release your cans/bottles in the Brooklyn area? Once a week? And in which stores? And it sounds like they sell out within an hour or so.

 

There's a new batch of cans about once every month. It hits all over town, but Grimm has stopped releasing a list of specific stores that get it because many stores requested that they didn't put up that info. Follow their Instagram account for release info - they're good about putting up there when a new batch of something is going to drop. And yes... most Grimm stuff sells out within a few hours of it dropping, especially if that store puts it on blast on social media, Beer Menus, etc., or someone puts the store on blast on here (check the monthly Grimm threads in the Mid-Atlantic forum). If a store doesn't put it up on social media or post about it on here though, the stuff might last a little longer, but usually not more than a day, at least for the IPAs and stouts. The sours tend to linger for a few days at some places.

 

Picked up the BA Double Negative and the Spruce Gose, thought the Double Negative was okay, gonna get into the Spruce tonight. Hoping to see some of their IPAs and DIPAs in SF.

 

FYI because I've seen a few people say this, but the IPAs don't hit anywhere outside NY, and likely never will based on comments made by Grimm on here.

 

I've been able to try some of their IPA's through trades. Not fresh fresh. But still pretty damn good. I'm trying to figure out a way to bring some back on my next OH can release trip.

 

Sten @ Beltway Brewing FTW! Amazing facility out there.

 

I think Firestone should take this approach.

 

i picked up 6-day-old luponic distortion a couple days ago....hopefully things continue in that direction

 

Picked up a Ba Maple double negative today for $17. Is that about the going rate for that beer or did I get gouged?

Also, I read up about it on reviews on here and numerous accounts mentioned infection in the feb 2016 batch (the one I bought), so needless to say I'm a bit worried. Was gonna sit on the bottle for a while but now I'm not so sure....

 

@tokimedo there's only one batch of Maple that we've produced, so all of it is from the same batch. We had an intermittent problem on the bottling line and there have been a few random bottles that turned out to be oxidized. Most of the people who reported off bottles were in western NY. We're offering refunds for any bottles that aren't up to snuff -- you can email [email protected] for details. In NY it sold for $15-$18 depending on the venue.

 

awesome, really appreciate the response !!!

 

i live in SoCal and there is 2014 double jack on the shelves at bevmo right now.

 

i believe it. all i'm saying is that somebody is making an effort to get fresher fw stuff to the shelf based on multiple quick deliveries of luponic distortion and some of the old regulars around here. just hoping things continue in that direction.

p.s. macaframalama

 

Thanks for the detailed and engaging response. You shed some light on how you do your contract brewing. It sounds like you are more hands on than most. For me there is still a disconnect though. I have too much respect for the amount of work and sacrifice it takes to own and operate a brewery to not have some separation for brewers and contract brewers. I just feel there should be a clear distinction. Being present for wort production is great, but there is a lot that goes on during the portion of the process that you trust to another company. For me process has always been more important than recipe. It is awesome that you work with such great people and that the beer has been so well received and won the awards you mentioned. I hope the breweries each get to share those accolades with you.

You lost me a little bit by saying you don't need to "scale up" recipes. I don't want to devolve this into that kind of discussion though. I'll just chalk it up to misunderstanding what I'm talking about or semantics.

Cheers

 

I think we're more or less on the same team here. Believe me, nothing burns my ass more than when contract breweries try to muddy the waters and make claims to "localness" and/or gypsy status when they're essentially nothing more than branding companies. In New York this is a BIG problem and these people are, basically, the enemy of all that is good and true in craft beer.

Because at the end of the day, process trumps recipe every. single. time.

That being said, every brewery has a staff. The brewer/owner gives instructions to the cellarman, who follows the process under his oversight and according to his specs. Brewing is almost always already a concerted activity of many individuals, under somebody's direction and oversight. It's really no different for us; we have to manage and trust in our partners, who are essentially our employees.

Like any brewery owner, we have to own responsibility for both successes and fuckups of our entire team -- for example when our mobile bottler had a bottling line issue with some of the maple bourbon double negative bottles we released a couple of months back, the responsibility falls on us.

We are proud to be far more involved with our liquid than most brewery owners. This is the only way it can work because in a situation where we've worked with five different head brewers within the past two years, we are the only ones who can ensure consistency of vision and process, and it requires rigorous oversight and engagement.

Anyway, we started our company with almost nothing and we're planning our own dream facility now, and we never could have done it any other way.