What's the plan for 2013?

This time of year there are lots of year end wrap-up stories and best/worst lists that come out.  Since I generally don't pay much attention to such things the idea of putting one together for BSBC wasn't too appealing.  So instead of doing that I thought I would take a few moments to preview our plans for 2013. 

First off let me say that in a lot of ways its been an amazing six months.  The sense of accomplishment from actually get this thing off the ground has been very satisfying.  Everyone has been very supportive and so far the market response has been great.  We've still got a long way to go before we are "in the black" as they say but every day we get a little closer thanks to the great beer drinkers in this town.  For that I thank you all.

So what's "on tap" for 2013 (bad pun's aside)?  Well I guess we can start with what's actually on tap.  In order to keep everybody up to speed on what's coming and when and in order to keep inventories under control (especially now that we have a distributor) I've put together a release calender for the year.  I've needed to do it for a while (even when I was self-distributing) but just finally got it together.  The regular rotation of beers and availability is shown below:

 

I've settled on having 4 core "series" available at once.  Staying true to the idea of rotating availability I have basically created 4 sets of beers that contain two alternating styles.  The rotation is set up so that two beers change out every 3 months or so.  The Round and Round series is a rotating session beer.  Travelling IPA is just what it says, a changing IPA.  Gastronome is the series of beers created to incorporate food influences and encourage pairing.  Carte Blanche is just the catch-all for everything else.  In addition to the 4 "cores" we will also do the occasional draft only special release as well as some big bottle releases of other fun stuff (think barrels and brett) starting late in 2013.  Of course I still reserve the right to alter this plan based on ingredient availability, market conditions or pure whim.

Speaking of bottles.  Look for them to start hitting shelves in April.  6 packs and 4 packs.  I'm currently working on version 3 or 4 of my bottling plan but that's probably a whole other post in itself.  I'll have to expound on that another day. 

That just leaves the tasting room.  Well the timeline on that seems to be more in flux every day.  I have touched on it before but I really do have a good reason for being the only brewery in town without one.  When I was looking for space to house the brewery way back in early 2011 the taproom law hadn't passed yet.  Being the pessimistic sort I didn't want to sign a lease on a bigger space since that would have probably ensured that the law wouldn't have passed.  Instead I settled on a space that had room to grow when I was ready.  The adjacent space in my building that I would need to expand into is not yet available and I'm not exactly sure now when it will be open.  Unfortunately that has put the tasting room in a little bit of limbo for the time being.  I don't really have the funds to build it right now anyway so we'll just have to leave it at "sometime in the future...maybe by the end of the year...maybe not."

So I guess that's about it for now.  Hopefully all will go according to plan in 2013.  If 2012 is any indication though it will probably only go about 60% to plan.  The trick will be having fun with the other 40%!