Trillium Brewing Company (2020)

This is great analytical thought - where do you get your information regarding "rate of sell through", or is this speculation? Makes sense either way. I agree that they're at some level of growth related inflexion point, and combined with that - one thing we learned during the wage dustup a couple years ago, these guys aren't very good managers. It might be over speculation, but I'd love to hear an insider's account of what's going on inside Trillium right now...when Beer Advocate is suggesting that Other Half might be able to produce a unique beer a day for 2020, and Trillium can't even release a couple beers in a couple weeks...there are problems.

 

They released a lot of beers at the end of last year. Maybe they are just slowing it down so there aren’t so many options and things don’t get old. Maybe they are in the process of moving Canton production like someone mentioned. Could be a short break for the holidays as well. At least they should have some beer for the CT farm when that opens..

 

Cans were in distro for a little bit maybe a year and a half, 2 years ago. It'll be interesting though at this point to see if Trillium or Treehouse will be first to have regular, steady distro across the state. Or maybe they go the Alchemist route and do random can drops in NYC and LA.

 

Disagree with the Veil, not a fan of their IPAs (regardless of ABV) and I do enjoy Monkish, but would consider them a step below EQ.

 

Great thing about beer is that its subjective and everyone's palate is different. I enjoy Veil IPA's because the majority of them are brewed without lactose and are rarely on the sweeter side. EQ makes some really great IPA's but I would never put them above Monkish, but that of course is just my opinion.

 

True, all of it is subjective. Though I wouldn't rate Veil even as the best Richmond IPA brewer, especially for non-lactose ones; that would be Triple Crossing.

 

Seconded. And I like them both. But I agree Triple Crossing is better. Battle Creek is one fantastic IPA.

 

I asked them at Fort Point last week about amount of offerings. They said January historically is a slower month so intent was to have less beer sitting.

 

I also have nothing factual to add and don't get to Trillium as much as I used to but I was in Fort Point a few weeks ago and then in Fenway last Saturday and this does not seem true based on my experience. Fort Point on a Saturday afternoon was pretty crowded and a wait for any seats at the bar or at bar tables. Fenway this last Saturday night was a wait despite the snow. I don't track their releases that closely but they seem to sell out at a reasonable rate. I had wanted to get DDH Vicinity cans last weekend as I had missed the last release and the only location that had the was Fenway and I think it was released maybe 2 weeks prior? I can't see an issue with selling through stuff in 2 weeks.

I do feel like they have released a lot of different and unique beers in the past couple months that may not be to the tastes of everyone (certainly many that I have no interest in) so perhaps those hang around a bit longer?

Like I say, all based on my limited experience but I don't see signs of trouble here.

 

I think they're all great points. All things considered they could be totally fine for all I know, but I suppose it all comes down to how they've planned and forecast the business. My uninformed view is that they probably took on such big, expensive projects based on the hypergrowth they were seeing back when and unless they properly modeled out their growth, their sales and cost could be out of whack - who knows.

I think beer sitting around could sometimes be a false-positive, too, in fairness. They never give an indication on batch sizes and that's an important piece. But if batches sizes are unchanged and product is sticking around longer on average than it once was, that's definitely a barometer for popularity and has a big impact on cash flow.

So many unknowns - I really wish there was some definitive source of data. I might try looking into Trillium check-ins by month on Untappd, could be some nuggets there.

 

This makes some sense, dry Jan appears to be a real thing even for the craft beer scene. I couldn't believe that there was no line at tree house on a sat when it was 60 degrees out a couple weeks ago and they had a bunch of highly regarded dipas, triple shot and new maple stout available.

 

I absolutely lack the motivation to do that kind of work but would be interested in hearing what you come up with!

 

In the middle of dry january myself right now - but that normally means I'm buying less in December to prepare. I have no issue buying right now so i'm stocked up on my hazies for February.

 

Can I just say the new website continues to be hot garbage. Is there any way to tell what's on draft vs. what's an on-site bottle now? If you click on-site bottles it says no results found for any location.

The amount of clicks required to get any reasonable information is super annoying. Form over function.

 

Seconded. The last site was perfect in its simplicity.

 

Following up on this. I just visited Fort Point and there's a ton of stuff on the draft/bottle list that isn't on the website. What a joke. Just give us a PDF like the last site.

 

Classic example of fixing something that wasn't broken.

 

My brother grabbed two bottles of the BA Coffee Cake for me because he works close by. I probably won’t see him for another month or two; I’m not cheating myself by not making more of an effort to drink these sooner rather than later right?

 

Am I correct in thinking they rolled out the new site a few months ago, hastily backpedaled and restored the old site after immediate backlash, and have now quietly switched back to the new site after not fixing any of the things that were wrong with it? I honestly wish I was back in college to bring this to my UX design class as a shining example of entirely unusable information hierarchy.

 

It’s very unlikely to make any difference at all. I wouldn’t worry about it.