Citra DIPA - Where is it available?

Thanks Todd, I appreciate the opportunities Beer Advocate provides for beer makers and drinkers to interact.


First off, however, I would like to point out that I have not taken any offense to what evilc has said and that that contact info is posted for anyone who wants to talk about our beer; good bad or otherwise. The following response is longer than I intended, but I thought it would be good to get some information out there…

For anyone that is not familiar with us, here is a little background: We are a small brewpub located in an even smaller mountain town (population 1800). We survive on enthusiastic locals and summer tourism. Our pub accounts for about 90% of our total income and distribution (mostly in 22 oz bottles) accounts for the rest. Due to the seasonal nature of the pub, we have excess production capacity in the offseason (which we distribute) and just try to keep up with the in-house sales during the summer. This is why there are times where it is relatively easy to find our IPA in So Cal and times when it is nearly impossible.

From the posts above I think there are a few questions that I can answer.

1. Why don’t you make more Citra?
Citra has about a 27 day brew cycle, which is about twice as long as our regular line-up. This means that if we made Citra all the time, we would routinely run out of beer at our pub. In the off-season, when we could brew Citra more often, we have to fit in our regular seasonal brews (Pumpkin, Winter, Anniversary etc).

2. What is up with distribution of Citra?
The largest batch of Citra we can make is 120 cases. When we first released Citra it was not a huge deal; we sent some to our distributor, some to our local accounts and some at the pub. Needless to say, after the Gold Medal at GABF, it blew up. Our next release we had people following the delivery truck around, store owners pissed they couldn’t get more, some places up-charging the beer to ridiculous prices, it was a mess. The last release we decided to go with a brewery only route, 40 cases each day over three days; it would bring people into the pub (which we saw as a good thing) and, if you went through the effort of coming to Kernville, you would be able to get a reasonable amount as opposed to the 1-bottle limit many retailers were using. This also allowed some of the enthusiastic locals who keep us open year-round to get their hands on some. I won’t lie; there was a financial benefit to selling the beer directly to the customer at $7/bottle vs at $50/case to the retail store. As a plus, most folks that came hung out and had lunch/dinner and a few beers, tipped waitresses, got a hotel room, gas etc – it was a big deal for a small town. Yeah, there were a lot of people that were pissed that they couldn’t buy Citra in LA or San Diego, but the people I hung out with that made the trip up here seemed happy that they did.

3. Why don’t we expand so we can make more Citra?
Kernville does not have a sewage system; everyone here is on septic. That means that all of our liquid waste goes into the ground, and if you are not familiar with the brewing process, that is a lot. We can never have a 100,000 bbl brewery here. We could go to Bakersfield and do that, but there is a reason we chose to live in Kernville. With that said, we could do a small expansion, maybe to 5,000 or 10,000 bbl, which is an option we are looking at currently. Even at that size there are a lot of issues; zoning, infrastructure, high cost of good due to our remote location, etc. Even at that size I doubt all Citra related issues will be solved.

evilc listed Hess and Alpine as other small breweries that have raised capital (and they are two of my favorite breweries); I’m pretty sure that neither has broken ground on a new facility yet, so it is not always so simple. I know a lot of breweries have jumped on the expansion train; it is a good time to be in the beer business. I just want to make sure that we do what makes sense for us. We have 25 employees, Kyle’s family, my family and a lot of happy customers that are relying on us to make good decisions. Hopefully we are.

Cheers,
Eric Giddens

 

Eric, This is awesome and keep rewarding the locals before the rest of us. I wish more breweries would do this, especially a certain large brewery next to my house. I had a couple Citras recently and I see why people go gaga over it. Keep doing what you're doing.

 

Eric,

Thanks for taking the time to interact with us BA'ers and for responding to the emails that I have sent to you in the past. Class act as always and look forward to seeing Kern River @ the Firestone Invitational Beer Fest! Cheers!

 

:EDIT: Deleted what I typed to the other guy.

I dig what you're doing all the way over at Kern from NY Eric. Keep it up. I was lucky enough to try some Citra out here and it's outstanding. Save it for the locals, they'll appreciate it more.

 

Not to thread drift as it does allude to the Citra hop, has anyone tasted the new Shaddock IPA from Widmer, they infuse it with a bit of grapefruit rind to further enhance the Citra flavor profile.

Cheers.....

 

Eric, thank you for interacting here with us BA's. It's nice to get first word from the source. Stick to your roots and the things you love and you can never go wrong.

I just received a bottle of Citra in a BIF last night. I was ecstatic and I can't wait to try your beer. I missed out on getting a taste at GABF.

 

You came out swinging with this statement "The brewery sells out in several days at the most on releases. It isn't something you can walk in and get. It's totally dumb how they limit it like they do. Everyone seems to want to have a "Pliny the Younger" hype beer these days...." Then when someone offered a rational explanation (albeit with an insulting tone) you ratcheted up the rhetoric and tried to substantiate your position with a lot of self-serving theoretical claims, backed by an increasingly defensive tone. Now you accuse them (ironically) of "irrational defense mode." You should take a step back and ask yourself if you contributed something useful to the thread, or merely hijacked it with your churlish, argumentative rants. There is a reason your posts have zero "likes". It's supposed to be about the beer, not your personal peeves.