Tree House Brewing Company (August 2017)

Really? I can understand the left turn in, but think the left out can be pretty hairy...

 

Touché.

 

I meant that in a positive outlook type way

 

TH twitter just mentioned that Julius allotments will be going up once the Haze is gone...

 

So I'm seeing the 50BBL brewhouse referenced here:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/restaurants/blog/2017/07/17/tree-house-brewing-open-charlton/

and the daily capacity (240BBL) referenced here:
http://www.masslive.com/food/2017/07/tree_house_brewing_opens_new_e.html

I guess when they're running at max they'll be doing 4x brew cycles in a day... which appears to be what happened with Eureka.

 

They originally were planning on a 50bbl but changed to a 60bbl since it made things work out better (I'm assuming since they had a 30bbl system in Monson and a bunch of 60bbl tanks/etc the math was just easier with the 60bbl)

 

I feel like they woulda been completely justified going with a 120bbl system. Most Monson batches were ~500 cases, which is two runs on the 30bbl. Four runs seems exhausting. Maybe as @cmurphycode said tho, the new system can be running multiple components simultaneously.

I'm just going thru this all to try and predict out the TH experience in the coming months.

 

It seems weird at first but whether it's due to cost, quality, flexibility to brew experiments, or just conservative planning, a lot of the craft guys systems are smaller than you'd expect - they seem to greatly prefer multiple batches. Probably a mix of all 4 reasons.

 

It could be longer term planning that after a while beer geeks will move on to he next big hype brewery. not to say that they will not be putting out amazing beers just the hype will die down. Look at the alchemist everybody said the new brewery was too small. Aside from a few summer weekends, special
Events in the area, and holidays you can walk right into the alchemist and walk out with multiple cases.

 

I get keeping that in the back of your mind, but this is a totally different animal we're talking about.

Just think about the amount of people within 100 miles of TH vs. the amount of people within 100 miles of The Alchemist.

 

I mean I can see the "I've never been carded" etc. But to get pissed when YOU'RE the one that let your ID expire is ridiculous

 

Did ya get haze before it sold oit?

 

And yet Alchemist just announced they've been running out of Heady by 3PM each day recently.

Don't know where TH is going to level off, but there is certainly business logic to not ramping up production too quickly. Smaller investment, tighter grip on quality, and the hype lives on a lot longer when there's still a shortage.

 

I think I've been carded every time I've gone.

 

Just got back from my first trip to Charlton. That facility and location is incredible. So much potential with what is there. Was hoping there wouldn't be much of a line when we got there at 2:30 but the upper lot was still full and the lower lot was probably at 60% capacity if I had to guess. The line was just about to the end of the upper parking lot..took about 45 minutes from there to checkout. When we left at 3:30 the line was basically as long as it was when we got there, maybe a little short and the lower lot was less full.
I came in from 20E so I didn't notice if they weren't allowing left turns in but there is clearly a sign stating no left turns out. Makes sense, for reasons previously mentioned. Also, I got ID'd and didn't pay any attention to whether or not anyone else around me did too. They made a big scene announcing that one of the customer's birthday was today, they asked everyone to shout 'happy birthday' in unison..was pretty cool.
Make the effort to go, if you are considering it. Nowhere near it's full potential yet but it's still a worthwhile trip. Can't wait to go back in a few months to see what changes they make.

 

Welcome to Jurassic Park.

 

I hear ya, but my gut tells me that the TH crew also believes this to be their final stop. Damian looks to have put his heart and soul into Charlton, and given Dean's comments about working 80 hour weeks, I also think they have a goal of a more chill pace of selling beer. The place seems big enough that if they needed to expand their brewhouse, they could probably do it in that building. It's all conjecture, but not entirely baseless.

 

If my math is right, it seems like they're selling about 7000 allotments per week right now, and obviously selling through all of it. So if they want to offer case limits (in total each day) they'll have to increase they're production from ~400bbl/wk to about ~670bbl/wk or about 1.6x what they're able to do right now. Add on top of that plenty for growler fills and hopefully some retail accounts popping back up, call it 2x current production for them to meet current demand.

I guess the bad news is it will probably take a while to ramp up operations that much.

The good news, though, is that you're right @GabrielEVH , they have "theoretical capacity" to produce up to 6x what they're doing now.

 

Wow can't believe there's only 20 cases of beer leftover. That's an incredible amount of beer sold in a day...but what's even more incredible is the volume of people going through!

 

The amount of beer sold in a day is proportional to the volume of visitors.