Craft Brewery Experiences (1 Viewer)

[waiver wire]

So, I'm doing a "stout night" at our brewery this Thursday and I'm curious what people see as the essential styles/beers in the genre.

We are doing the following:

Chocolate/Milk Stout - our brewery has one that's really popular, we're basing the night around this.
Raspberry chocolate stout - see above. Raspberry version of our stout.
Ghost Pepper Stout on cask - again, our stout on cask aged with ghost peppers, cinnamon and coffee
Imperial/Coffee Stout - Peche Mortel (Dieu du Ciel) - historically regarded as the best beer from Canada, tastes have changed but we love this one.
Export Stout - Guinness Export - felt like we had to have Guinness for a Stout night, didn't want to do the version on tap at every bar in town.
Irish Stout - from a local brewer, 4.6%, helps to balance the big ABV ones
Oatmeal Stout - from a local brewer - 4.2% - again, for balance and range of style.
Imperial Pumpkin Spice Pastry Stout - from Third Moon, huge hype brewery, will bring people in.

I'm coordinating food pairings as well, if anyone has suggestions. Being close to Halloween is helpful for buying individual sizes.

Chocolate/Milk Stout - Chocolate chip cookies
Raspberry Choc Stout - Almonds
Ghost Pepper Stout - ????
Imperial Coffee Stout - Hazelnut Chocolates (Ferrero Rocher)
Export Stout - ??? Could just be chips/fries
Irish Stout - ??? Might do something Graham cracker/s'mores ish
Oatmeal Stout - ??? Granola ish?
Imperial Pumpkin Stout - thinking maybe pretzels?

These are the top 2025 beers in BC in anyone is coming to BC

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-beer-awards-2025-winners-9.6942746

 

[Hastur]

I've only visited two breweries in my life. The Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, CA, and The Southern Growl in Greer, SC.

One thing that made the experience memorable was the food was outstanding.

 

[urbanhack]

Just give me a basic American Stout or a Russian Imperial Stout. Looks like you have a nice offering and many options covered.

 

[heckmanm]

For food pairings, I think a full-flavored cheese can go nicely with an export/tropical or imperial. Camembert, brie, or even blue.

 

[Desert_Power]

I've only visited two breweries in my life. The Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, CA, and The Southern Growl in Greer, SC.

One thing that made the experience memorable was the food was outstanding.

Such a random pairing since Sierra Nevada has a big taproom/facility about an hour from Greer.

 

[Hastur]

I've only visited two breweries in my life. The Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, CA, and The Southern Growl in Greer, SC.

One thing that made the experience memorable was the food was outstanding.

Such a random pairing since Sierra Nevada has a big taproom/facility about an hour from Greer.

A few of my friends and I attempted Mt. Shasta about 25 years ago, and while traveling around that general area of California we stopped at the brewery(looooong before the Sierra Nevada brewery was built here in the Carolinas).

I live relatively close to the Southern Growl. Gotta stop in there for a burger. Their burgers are insane. They do a thanksgiving leftover burger each November. Looking forward to it!

Here is this weeks burger special: THE ORANGE LOTUS BURGER* certified angus burger cooked medium-well topped with pickled lotus root, spicy honey orange sauce, finely shredded cabbage, and avocado aioli on a house bun. 15.50 Beer recommendation: Pair with Tangerine Radler.

 

[Wingnut]

I've only visited two breweries in my life.

Back in 2016 when I met my wife, she hadn't been to many breweries, but she is an avid beer lover like myself...I wanna say she had been to maybe 2 in her life. Well, I had to change that. I started taking her to every brewery I could find, and kept track of them all in a note app in my phone as we visited them.

I still update the list every time we go to a new one (not all are new to me but are new to her).

Here's the list, mostly in chronological order I think, a few might have been added later. I wish I would have added the cities they're in (prob 75% of them are in Florida tho)...most were pre-Covid...I think we're over 70 now. I've been to plenty more, but these are the ones we've been to together:

• Sailfish

• Coppertail

• Lakeland brewing co

• Due south

• Copperpoint

• Saltwater

• Civil Society

• Tampa Bay Brewing Co Ybor

• Tampa Beer Works

• Tampa Bay Brewing Co Westchase

• Cigar City

• 3 Daughters

• Cage

• Cycle

• Funky Buddha

• Two Henrys

• Twisted Trunk

• Mad Beach

• Angry Chair

• Hop Nuts (Las Vegas)

• Islamorada beer co

• Florida Keys Brewing Co

• Waterfront Brewery Key West

• TBBC Westchase

• Hidden Springs

• Escape

• 7venth Sun Dunedin

• Soggy Bottom

• Woodwright

• Caledonia

• Arkane

• 7venth Sun Tampa

• Grove Roots

• Six Ten

• Dancing Gnome (Pittsburgh)

• Brew Gentlemen (Pittsburgh)

• Voodoo (Pittsburgh)

• Ellipsis

• Cypress & Grove

• First Magnitude

• Zephyrhills

• Swan Brewing

• Mathews Brewing (WPB)

• Calusa

• Brew Life

• Dissent

• Zydeco

• In The Loop

• Biere de Mac Brew Works

• Cheboygan Brewey

• Half Barrel Beer Project Orlando

• Bullfrog Creek

• Good Liquid Brewing

• Bootleggers Brewing

• Four Stacks

• Late Start

• Magnanimous

• Woven Water

• Brew Bus

• Bastet

• Crooked thumb

• Troubled Water

• NOLA

• Avid Brewery

• P.A.W. pinellas ale works

• Civil Society 2nd WBP location

• Bayboro

• Bay Cannon

• If I Brewed The World

• Bottlenose (Jax FL)

• Voodoo Valrico

• Florida Ave Brewing (FL ave)


We really like beer

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

Lord I love this subject.

 

[Nemesis]

@Northern Voice
I'm an avid craft brew guy and I like stouts. However, I don't like the >10% Imperials / BBA. Tried so many times to like them....but nope.
Good list you have.
however, I would suggest adding a REGULAR Coffee Stout in the 5-7% ABV

 

[Joe Bryant]

@Northern Voice can you update us on the job stuff? Are you still doing the same work in the industry?

 

[Joe Bryant]

Visited Outer Range Brewing last week in Frisco, CO. https://outerrange.com/

Outstanding. They had more hazy IPAs than West Coast but the two West Coast versions I had were excellent. Good selection and well organized for casual beer fans to guide them on hoppiness and dark vs light.

I see so many breweries fumble this super easy step.

 

[Ministry of Pain]

Visited Outer Range Brewing last week in Frisco, CO. https://outerrange.com/

Outstanding. They had more hazy IPAs than West Coast but the two West Coast versions I had were excellent. Good selection and well organized for casual beer fans to guide them on hoppiness and dark vs light.

I see so many breweries fumble this super easy step.

Never been to the brewery but use to periodically get this shipped into Florida, mostly had their IPAs in cans, always delicious
Super expensive, 4-pack retail in Florida would be $30 I would say, easily
You end up breaking them apart into single cans for sale

 

[Northern Voice]

@Northern Voice can you update us on the job stuff? Are you still doing the same work in the industry?

We finished renovating our taproom in September, added indoor Bocce, darts, shuffleboard, foosball etc and approximately tripled our space.

We have a strange/not ideal model, where our beer is very widely distributed throughout Ontario through both the provincial run outlets and grocery stores but have historically had very little taproom sales.

Part of it is our location not being ideal, part of it was before these renos we didn't have a great space.

The problem obviously is the grocery/retail stores are a lot lower margin with all the time to can, cost of labels, cost to ship and lower price points vs making the beer and selling it one door over.

So we're really working hard to build our taproom base. We have some solid regulars now but to be honest a lot of it based around me - I have lots of friends from being a craft beer guy before I worked for the brewery and my squash club has a good group of guys who are very supportive of the brewery as well. But right now I think if I went away, our taproom business would fall off a fair bit.

So we're trying new things - this stout night that I mentioned a few posts up feels like it's going to be at capacity and looking at the tickets sales a lot of it isn't names we recognize which is what we want.

We're trying to leverage our relationship with the local hockey team (we do the official beer for them) and the work we do in the community (we have a charity beer with a pub in town that supports a different cause every quarter, we support the hockey team's "pink in the rink" night to benefit cancer research, we're hosting a charity squash tournament/toy drive next month, etc) to build the tie with the city but it's still been tough.

We're great at getting beer all over Ontario and we're pretty good at drawing people in to buy beer to go and merch from our retail store, we just haven't nailed down the busy taproom yet, so still a work in progress.

And honestly people are buying less craft beer. One of the other breweries in town went out of business and another was bought up by a restaurant chain, essentially just to brew for them. So it's us and one other place in the city. They're the exact opposite of us - beautiful farm destination brewery with a lively taproom and regulars but almost no distribution beyond that.

 

[Joe Bryant]

@Northern Voice can you update us on the job stuff? Are you still doing the same work in the industry?

We finished renovating our taproom in September, added indoor Bocce, darts, shuffleboard, foosball etc and approximately tripled our space.

We have a strange/not ideal model, where our beer is very widely distributed throughout Ontario through both the provincial run outlets and grocery stores but have historically had very little taproom sales.

Part of it is our location not being ideal, part of it was before these renos we didn't have a great space.

The problem obviously is the grocery/retail stores are a lot lower margin with all the time to can, cost of labels, cost to ship and lower price points vs making the beer and selling it one door over.

So we're really working hard to build our taproom base. We have some solid regulars now but to be honest a lot of it based around me - I have lots of friends from being a craft beer guy before I worked for the brewery and my squash club has a good group of guys who are very supportive of the brewery as well. But right now I think if I went away, our taproom business would fall off a fair bit.

So we're trying new things - this stout night that I mentioned a few posts up feels like it's going to be at capacity and looking at the tickets sales a lot of it isn't names we recognize which is what we want.

We're trying to leverage our relationship with the local hockey team (we do the official beer for them) and the work we do in the community (we have a charity beer with a pub in town that supports a different cause every quarter, we support the hockey team's "pink in the rink" night to benefit cancer research, we're hosting a charity squash tournament/toy drive next month, etc) to build the tie with the city but it's still been tough.

We're great at getting beer all over Ontario and we're pretty good at drawing people in to buy beer to go and merch from our retail store, we just haven't nailed down the busy taproom yet, so still a work in progress.

And honestly people are buying less craft beer. One of the other breweries in town went out of business and another was bought up by a restaurant chain, essentially just to brew for them. So it's us and one other place in the city. They're the exact opposite of us - beautiful farm destination brewery with a lively taproom and regulars but almost no distribution beyond that.

That's super interesting. Sounds like you've done a ton of work there.

What is the brand?

I'm just an interested outsider on this but from all I've researched for breweries, I think you're right in it's such a key thing to get more of that higher margin tap room sales.

 

[Northern Voice]

@Northern Voice can you update us on the job stuff? Are you still doing the same work in the industry?

We finished renovating our taproom in September, added indoor Bocce, darts, shuffleboard, foosball etc and approximately tripled our space.

We have a strange/not ideal model, where our beer is very widely distributed throughout Ontario through both the provincial run outlets and grocery stores but have historically had very little taproom sales.

Part of it is our location not being ideal, part of it was before these renos we didn't have a great space.

The problem obviously is the grocery/retail stores are a lot lower margin with all the time to can, cost of labels, cost to ship and lower price points vs making the beer and selling it one door over.

So we're really working hard to build our taproom base. We have some solid regulars now but to be honest a lot of it based around me - I have lots of friends from being a craft beer guy before I worked for the brewery and my squash club has a good group of guys who are very supportive of the brewery as well. But right now I think if I went away, our taproom business would fall off a fair bit.

So we're trying new things - this stout night that I mentioned a few posts up feels like it's going to be at capacity and looking at the tickets sales a lot of it isn't names we recognize which is what we want.

We're trying to leverage our relationship with the local hockey team (we do the official beer for them) and the work we do in the community (we have a charity beer with a pub in town that supports a different cause every quarter, we support the hockey team's "pink in the rink" night to benefit cancer research, we're hosting a charity squash tournament/toy drive next month, etc) to build the tie with the city but it's still been tough.

We're great at getting beer all over Ontario and we're pretty good at drawing people in to buy beer to go and merch from our retail store, we just haven't nailed down the busy taproom yet, so still a work in progress.

And honestly people are buying less craft beer. One of the other breweries in town went out of business and another was bought up by a restaurant chain, essentially just to brew for them. So it's us and one other place in the city. They're the exact opposite of us - beautiful farm destination brewery with a lively taproom and regulars but almost no distribution beyond that.

That's super interesting. Sounds like you've done a ton of work there.

What is the brand?

I'm just an interested outsider on this but from all I've researched for breweries, I think you're right in it's such a key thing to get more of that higher margin tap room sales.

We're

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Bobcaygeon Brewing Co

Bobcaygeon Brewing Company - come visit our brewery and taproom in Peterborough, Ontario or buy great craft beer online for home delivery.

bobcaygeonbrewing.ca

 

[Ministry of Pain]

@Northern Voice can you update us on the job stuff? Are you still doing the same work in the industry?

We finished renovating our taproom in September, added indoor Bocce, darts, shuffleboard, foosball etc and approximately tripled our space.

We have a strange/not ideal model, where our beer is very widely distributed throughout Ontario through both the provincial run outlets and grocery stores but have historically had very little taproom sales.

Part of it is our location not being ideal, part of it was before these renos we didn't have a great space.

The problem obviously is the grocery/retail stores are a lot lower margin with all the time to can, cost of labels, cost to ship and lower price points vs making the beer and selling it one door over.

So we're really working hard to build our taproom base. We have some solid regulars now but to be honest a lot of it based around me - I have lots of friends from being a craft beer guy before I worked for the brewery and my squash club has a good group of guys who are very supportive of the brewery as well. But right now I think if I went away, our taproom business would fall off a fair bit.

So we're trying new things - this stout night that I mentioned a few posts up feels like it's going to be at capacity and looking at the tickets sales a lot of it isn't names we recognize which is what we want.

We're trying to leverage our relationship with the local hockey team (we do the official beer for them) and the work we do in the community (we have a charity beer with a pub in town that supports a different cause every quarter, we support the hockey team's "pink in the rink" night to benefit cancer research, we're hosting a charity squash tournament/toy drive next month, etc) to build the tie with the city but it's still been tough.

We're great at getting beer all over Ontario and we're pretty good at drawing people in to buy beer to go and merch from our retail store, we just haven't nailed down the busy taproom yet, so still a work in progress.

And honestly people are buying less craft beer. One of the other breweries in town went out of business and another was bought up by a restaurant chain, essentially just to brew for them. So it's us and one other place in the city. They're the exact opposite of us - beautiful farm destination brewery with a lively taproom and regulars but almost no distribution beyond that.

Greetings,

Not uncommon that I stumble on to aa beer I like and then I visit the brewery in person and the taproom is largely empty or nothing like say a sports bar which isn't really what most breweries are aiming for with their taprooms. The ones I like in North Carolina tend to be on creeks or have some sort of beautiful outside area you can just watch a few hours roll by with a cold beer in your hand, even on a cool/cold day at least the beer/alcohol will keep you warm.

Good job on the beer distribution. Visiting Toronto in April, any chance I would find it in a bottle or can anywhere?
Cheers!

 

[Wingnut]

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Bobcaygeon Brewing Co

Bobcaygeon Brewing Company - come visit our brewery and taproom in Peterborough, Ontario or buy great craft beer online for home delivery.

bobcaygeonbrewing.ca

Crazy that it asked to confirm I'm over 19 to enter the site. Don't think I've ever seen that.

Is there any way to get your beer shipped directly to customers in the US?