2015 was a great year for us and we hope it was for you. We completed the construction of the new brewery and relocated to our new home on Main Street in Speedway in May and opened the taproom in June.
The new brewery has exceeded our expectations in every way. The much larger facility and our investments in a larger quality lab and additional brewing capacity have allowed us to grow while continuing to make consistently high quality beers.
What’s on deck for 2016? While the majority of our business will continue to be wholesale distribution of our core seven beers that we make year round (Lift Off, Vacation, Slip Stream, Muse, J.W.P, Rip Cord and Carnival) we also have several very exciting things at the taproom.
1) We are now distributing our beers to Northern Indiana including all seven of our core beers on draft and Lift Off & Vacation in cans. As always we will try to keep the recent deliveries up to date on our website. At any given time you can find our beers on draft or in cans at hundreds of locations. If you cannot find our beers ask your favorite place to carry them more regularly or drop us an email with requests and we will work with our distributors.
2) Our Rare Devil Small Batch beer program is going to really grow at the taproom. We still mostly make Lift Off IPA as it was +90% of what we made in 2015 and it will continue to be the majority of what we make. However, besides our core beers we have years of brewing experience and 100s of other beers we also like to make. The Rare Devil program was started in 2014 with the intent to do small batch beers sometimes as little as 5 gallons to 20 gallons. Starting this month we will be planning to put on a new Rare Devil Small Batch beer at least twice a month at the taproom. First up are some of our favorites including Muse with Montmorency Tart Cherries and J.W.P. with Madagascar Vanilla Beans. Both of these have been made once in the last two years and were huge fan favorites. Look for them at the taproom in January.
3) Lift Off IPA Brett Project is going to become a regularly made beer in 2016. We have experimented with this beer for the last two years and we are ready to scale it up. It will go from being made at 5 to 20 gallon size batches to once every few months on our full size production system with the goal of having it on regularly at the taproom and seeing some limited distribution on draft and in cans.
4) More capacity planned. We will be increasing our capacity by another 30% this Spring when some new 80 bbl fermentation tanks arrive. In addition we are making some brewhouse investments to improve efficiencies. These investments will allow us to try and keep up with the demand for Lift Off IPA and give us capacity to still be able to make more of our other core beers like Rip Cord DIPA, Muse Golden Belgian Ale and Vacation Kolsch as well as grow the Rare Devil Small Batch program. We brewed almost 3000 bbls of Lift Off IPA in 2015 and we expect to make at least 5000 bbls of Lift Off IPA in 2016. So, we should be keeping your favorite places in stock with our kegs and cans.
5) More of our beers in cans. Right now Lift Off IPA & Vacation Kolsch cans are available across Indiana. We started canning several of our core beers for sales at the taproom in December. We plan to start distributing some additional core beers at some point in 2016 across Indiana. We have not decided when but the main candidates for distribution are Rip Cord DIPA, Muse Belgian Golden Ale and Slip Stream Pale Ale. Stay tuned.
As we start the year we also want to thank all of the great people we have the chance to work with in this industry and the people who enjoy our beers. We want to make sure every beer that you enjoy from us is awesome and that is what we focus on every day.
Aggressively Fun!
Shane, Michael & Bill
