Shared beer lists for breweries and taprooms

I thought that the common practice is to list them all at the flagship brewery, and on the satellites, to have the link to add beers to the flagship.

 

Well, in my town Kulshans Brewing has 3 locations, and brews at all 3. There's a 15bbl system at one, a 30bbl system at another, and a 1bbl system at the third. Core beers and some seasonals at the biggest one, other seasonals and some one-offs at the 15, and the small one is used as a pilot. How do we tracka brewery like that?

 

Kulshan opened a space down by the waterfront (that the Port of Bellingham handed them on a silver platter, but that's getting too much into local politics), in a container village, a few years ago. That's the 1bbl system, and those beers are only served there. Yes, the beers brewed at the Mothership, and K2 get poured at Trackside.

Sadly, Cnut closed their Kiribati out post, but Structures is now in that spot. We call it Struckanut.

 

New Holland Brewing here in Michigan has two satellite locations for beer, and both have brewing equipment for in-house draft consumption. One, The Knickerbocker location in Grand Rapids carries the Brewery designation, but the Battle Creek facility does not. (I should request the Brewery designation for this one?) Both locations also serve and sell packaged beers that are brewed at the main location.

So should a visitor to either satellite location rate/review beers from the main location at the BA page for the main location, and the locally-produced beers are entered and rated/reviewed on the BA page for each?

And to complicate the situation, I discovered that on a previous visit to the Battle Creek pub that I had a beer that was listed as a locally-brewed beer on the beer menu (there's a separate section of the beer menu for the locally-brewed beers), but this beer is also listed on the main brewery's page. However, some of the earlier dates of the ratings for this particular beer pre-date the opening of the Battle Creek location which happened just this year. So the main brewery gave the brewer at the satellite location the recipe to brew the same beer, and now it's locally-brewed. Maybe there are other beers where this situation exists, and maybe the same situation exists for the Grand Rapids location too. So it's complicated for something that isn't that important.

To keep it simple, it seems to me that entering a beer, and the rating/reviewing of it should all be done at whatever location the beer is consumed regardless of where it's brewed. A Note could be added to the satellite locations' BA page that 'more ratings/reviews for the beers not brewed locally can also be found at the main location's BA page' along with a link to the main brewery's page to make it easy for someone to see the other ratings if they desire to see more. Just my two cents worth.

 

Is this like the difference between Evil Twin and Evil Twin NYC? The distinction has always been confusing to me

 

Iron Hill has many locations. From what I have been told they all brew the same core beers and the head brewers can then brew special beers for their location. I don’t like most of the beers I have had from here so I can’t speak to what’s on tap past the core stuff. The core I’ve had had all been pretty ok to not good. I do want to get over to grab some imperial stout cans that I read are pretty nice.

Enjoy

 

I think the list of beers brewed doesn't necessarily need to be differentiated by location. I think anybody looking for specifics should look at the brewery website or call the location. The same label beer brewed at different locations could be markedly different. The current lists and reviews on the BA site are useful for consumers and also of historical interest. And there are other problems. Brewers can (and do) change formulas, inadvertently or on purpose, I have had a branded IPA that morphed from a West Coast amber bitter brew to a New England hazy (surprise!). Another example, Henry Weinhard Private Reserve is listed once. Earlier it was a product of Coors, and got mediocre ratings. Now Hop Valley (MolsonCoors owned) seems to have upgraded the brew, and it gets better reviews (rating is mostly unchanged). It's a pretty chaotic environment, and BA does well to keep tabs on things as it is.