Meet the Homebruer: Cesar Alfaro

On the cusp of releasing Batch 1000 BRYEIAN, we are profiling some of our homebruers on our staff! Many of our team members developed their love for The Bruery via homebrew clubs, and today those clubs and their members are still very important to us. That's a big reason why we host our Batch series competition for milestone brews.

One of our homebruers made his first batch in 2008, and today he works in our packaging department, carefully bottling and lovingly boxing bottles of beer to be sent out for your enjoyment. His name is Cesar, and he has excellent hair.

What sparked your interest in homebrewing?

August = Spiced Beer Month at the Tasting Room

A new month means a new theme at The Bruery Tasting Room. It's summery all year in CA, but Fall is fast approaching already which means the release of Autumn Maple and more beers full of palate pleasing spices you might find in your favorite foods!


Some special beers you can look forward to this month include our highly sought after, fast to kick, spicealicious horchata-inspired beer, aptly named Or Xata! We'll be releasing this on draft, as well as White Chocolate, our wheatwine made with cocoa nibs & vanilla; Batch 1000 BRYEIAN, made with a winning recipe from Colorado-based homebrewers Brian Pramov and Bryan Keas; plus several fun randalls and pins sprinkled throughout the month as outlined below. Please note that these dates are subject to change as needed. We are a small craft brewery and sometimes our production schedule has to change unexpectedly!

August 1:  Mmm, you can almost smell that lovely yam through the screen.

Meet the Hombruer: Matt Olesh

Homebrewing is where Patrick and the OG Bruery crew first got their adorable little beer making sea-legs. The homebrew community is certainly still a priority to us, and so for our milestone batches we host a competition where the winning recipe comes from ... you guessed it: homebrewers! So far we've made Batch 1, 50, 300 and are now on to our 1000th batch featuring a recipe from Brian and Bryan (AKA Briyan) from Colorado. They'll be coming out to visit us in mid-July to help brew Batch 1000, a Cascadian dark rye.

Though we are a larger company now than when we started only five years ago, our passion for brewing (and goofing off) has only grown stronger. Whether we work in the office, tasting room, or brewery itself, lots of us homebrew when we're off the clock, even though we're around it all day!

We're highlighting our "homebruers" in a series of blogposts in support of our upcoming Batch 1000 beer. This time we're featuring a man who is no stranger to many of you who hang at The Bruery Tasting Room. Matt Olesh is our Director of Retail Operations and he's been a homebrewing for about 5 years now.

HomebRued from Batch 1 to 1000, and Beyond!

For milestone batches like our first, 50th, 300th, and now our 1000TH BREW!!!, we've asked you guys to enter beers in our homebrew competitions. After the best recipe was selected, we brewed a limited quantity at our place with the winning homebrewers.

We're pretty excited about brewing our 1000th batch of beer this year. The recipe for our upcoming Batch 1000 comes from Brian Pramov & Bryan Keas of Denver, CO. Their hoppy dark rye, Night Ryder, won this round's competition beating out 199 other entries. In the spirit of Batch 1000, we'll be profiling some of our very own hombrewers homebruers on our staff in the coming weeks here on our Bruery Blog.