Casa Agria Specialty Ales

To be fair, not a single craft brewery prices their beer that way.

 

Your omniscience regarding the beer industry is noted.

 

Im local and intrigued about the membership but would like the chance to taste at least one of you beers before dropping $300. Will you guys be open monday? Can we taste/signup in person?

 

We will be opening up sample beers both sat/sun at the in person event. Please join us for some food and tasters.

 

@Xline9 Appreciate the additional details. Some of my concerns that I made to some friends that were considering joining, that were of concern to me:

• Who's brewing
• Where will the wort be made
• Where will the wort be stored.
• How will it be stored (foedors, wine barrels, stainless fermentors, etc.)

and some other loose ends have been detailed now . Samples is the biggest detail to highlight I think, knowing what potential customers might get (in terms of taste and quality) for their money before handing it over is key. I still personally feel the entry price point is too high for a startup, and I, personally, will be a wait and see potential future customer as a result. I'm sure many of us will be thrilled, myself included, with another sour brewery focused entry in the Socal beer scene if this pans out, and I wish you the best of luck. I hope to visit the tasting room once it opens.

Good contemporary examples have been brought up too as price/society comparisons. Mainly the Rare Barrel and The Bruery. While the Bruery's RS the first year was a comparable price (for 2009/2010) , and pretty close in terms of what you got, they were open nearly a year already when they launched it, and had a full tasting room. Sampling their beers beforehand made the decision easier. Another good example brought up, The Rare barrel. RB, had/has industrial, commercial brewing experience behind them, so while it was also still a gamble, most felt more confident in the investment/risk/reward would pan out in the end. Hope this weekends event goes well, I’m sure tasting reports/reviews will go a long way to alay most concerns.

 

Just to be clear though, the samples you will be pouring are homebrew and not anything brewed on The Lab Brew Co system and aged in barrels/Foeders, correct?

 

Correct, we just recently obtained our TTB license, we are now legally allowed to brew on a commercial system.

 

The first year of RS was $195 and actually only included 5 bottles (BA PiaPT, White Oak, 2TD, BT, BA 2TD), although it did include complementary events and merch. It's interesting how far that program has come since its inception was far more about opportunity to buy than actual included bottles.

 

Not sure how my name got into that quote

 

Yeah, I guess that was a bit on the snarky side by me, but it's true: ingredients are just a small percentage of the final price of beer.

That being said, I am not on board with new breweries, especially those that don't have brewers with a respectable resume, charging $30 for beers.

 

In a nutshell, this is why I'm not on board. Cheers to those who are willing to take this leap of faith. I'll be in the peanut gallery with these guys...

 

I'm not a huge fan of sours and only crave one on occasion so I'm not planning on a membership either way. But I do work across the street on Del Norte and I will definitely be in for tasters, growlers, and other non-commital beers.

But I think a good question to be asked is, (coming from the homebrew scene for many years myself) on paper it seems fairly easy to make a fruited sour beer that would be impressive to the BeerAdvocate community. Brew a blonde ale, add fruit, add yeast/bug culture that you've propagated from the bottom of your favorite commercial sour, and voila you've got hype (and a pretty tasty beer).

What types of sour beer expertise or yeast/bug management skills are either of the brewers bringing to the table in order to insure the unweildy sour bugs are used as intended and not just on a, whatever comes out of the foeder after 6 months basis?

 

Wow, I think I had quoted another message that I was going to respond to and it was saved as a draft, then when I was cleaning that out I accidentally left the quote tag from your post and deleted the one from @Retsinis . My bad.

 

For the moment I though that there was some post that I don't remember, but since I have not been drinking today (yet!) I got a little confused. Haha. All good.

 

As far as I understand it, they are brewing their own beer. They don't own the equipment, but it sounds to be a 100% hands on brewing situation.

 

It says tenant brewing for the first year. Not that it even matters though, if the end product is good who gives a damn what physical location it was brewed at?

 

If they rename their brewery to Cart-in-Front-of-the-Horse Ales, I will gladly sign up and write them a check post dated to 2017.