Cigar City Brew News

Welcome Our New Tasting Room Head Pilot Brewer: Ben Romano
A while back we acquired a small 45 gallon (just shy of 1 /12 bbl) pilot system. The goal was to use this smaller system to create test batches and interesting one-offs exclusively for the Tasting Room and select accounts. The system can brew roughly 6-9 sixtels (5.17 gallons) worth of beer, per batch. We have 1, 41 gallon and 2, 80 gallon fermenters for the system. Meaning we can have just over 6 bbls of brew going at any one time. Not astounding volumes if you are considering distribution, but to augment our regular lineup with interesting one-offs and as a way to test potential larger scale batches, it's a solid little system.

We were however missing one key ingredient. A dedicated brewer. Tim, Wayne and Doug are all pretty busy these days on the production side and don't have time for additional small-batch duties. So we turned to our buddy Ben Romano. Bay Area beer geeks will know Ben from Southern Brew Supply and from his efforts to launch Zen Brewing. Ben will be handling all small batch duties and his first efforts will be to brew up some session strength beers such as Milds and table strength Saisons. Expect to see some lager experiments as well.

The vast majority of the beer Ben creates will be Tasting Room only, though select accounts will occasionally see kegs. We are happy to have Ben and can't wait to touch our lips tot he first batch of his brew.

Cheers,
Joey and the CCB Team