Beer

It feels like it’s been a zillion years since we last released a large-scale batch of something new. One of the downsides to brewing at max capacity is that there’s been no room for one-offs. With the arrival of our two new 120bbl monster fermenters, we finally have the tank space to start scratching our collective creative itch again.

And, well, we scratched pretty hard right out of the gate here. Releasing 3 new beers all at once wasn’t quite how we intended to do it, I assure you, but sometimes that’s just how things shake out. The good news is they’re all tasting extremely rad. In fact, I’m overjoyed and incredibly proud that these beers are as good as they are. 

Here’s some seriously huge, immensely consequential news: we’ve signed a distribution agreement with Stone Distributing. Together, we’re launching Modern Times Beer throughout San Diego in the coming weeks.

Here’s the plan: our beer will be available to retailers through Stone starting June 24th. The week of July 8th will be our official launch week, for which we’re planning a slew of spectacular, invigorating events featuring our crew of marvelously entertaining brewers.

So all of you who have been emailing me about carrying our beer at your bar/restaurant/liquor store? Talk to your Stone sales rep ASAP. If you don’t know who your rep is, you can find them here.

Well, it’s been over 17 months since I left my job at Stone to begin work on Modern Times, and we (this has officially gone from an “I” to a “we” project) are finally making beer. Fuck yeah.

17 months sounds (and feels) like an enormous amount of time, but the construction phase of this project has actually been relatively short: just ~6 months from the time I took possession of the building until now. By almost any measure, that’s pretty speedy for turning a giant vacant warehouse into a functioning 30bbl brewery.

Whoa has a lot happened since my last update. As shameful as it is to have fallen behind on updating you, it’s made less shameful by the fact that we’ve made a ton of progress on getting this motherfucker open.

Since there’s so much to cover, I’m just going to run through it:

It’s been a while since we’ve checked up on what is inarguably the most important part of this whole project: the beer. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t get to spend much time working on the beer—it actually functions as something like a mini-vacation within the endless hurricane of bureaucratic & construction crap—but recently we’ve had some developments worth noting.

Starting a brewery has mostly been about managing my stress while floating on a vast sea of annoying bureaucracy. Occasionally though, I get to do something spectacularly awesome that doesn’t seem like it should be work, even when it’s extremely important. It’s like getting to frolic at the end of the tunnel before getting pulled back into the abyss.

The process of opening Modern Times has gone from “constant high level of work” to “feverish attempt to finish everything as quickly as possible.” The reason: we finally received our building permits.

Up until that point, we’d done virtually everything we could without permits and were struggling a bit to stay busy on the construction side (admin & brewing remained insanely busy). With permits in hand, it’s now a race to the finish.

I’m so excited I might pee a little. Why? Because I still can’t quite believe I managed to land these three guys.

Were you a journalist for a major publication wanting to write about us, you might say Modern Times is “positively stocked with an almost unbelievable combination of creativity & experience.” But, ya know, go with whatever works.

Something totally face-meltingly awesome happened the other day: someone poured me the very first homebrewed variation on a Modern Times Beer. Consider how remarkable that is given that Modern Times doesn’t even exist yet.

My goal for open source brewing is to create a community of tinkerers that are perpetually pushing us to evolve and improve. Publishing our recipes will certainly allow homebrewers to attempt clones if they want—and there’s some value in that, as far as dialing in your process—but modifying our recipes is the far more stimulating path, to my mind.

Here’s a cool thing: as far as I can tell, we’ll be the second brewery in the country to roast our own coffee (the first appears to be Two Brothers in Chicago).

That little fire engine red machine is an Ambex YM-2, an introductory-level roaster than can handle a beastly 5 lbs of green coffee at a time. It’s far from the fanciest roaster you can buy, but I found it on Craigslist and the price was right.