It’s officially a new year full of new challenges and new opportunities.

January tends to slow down for the hospitality industry, and many folks are ready to take a breath and reset. So, I thought I’d share some fun insider information with you.

At 12 Bones Brewing, we have two systems for producing beer: our small batch system is 1.5 barrels in size (a U.S. barrel being 31 gallons), and our full-sized system is 15 barrels. It takes roughly the same amount of time to make a batch of beer on either system.

While larger breweries can employ dozens of brewers in round-the-clock operations, 12 Bones Brewing has one brewer (shout out to Brandon!), who keeps all of our taps full of tasty craft beer year-round. And we have a clever way of getting more beer out of less batches . . . optimization!

You might notice we have a couple of different stouts on tap right now with the same ABV (alcohol by volume) that taste completely different. One is our Lights Out Stout, and the other is our Summit Up Coffee Stout. We masterfully enriched the Lights Out Stout with an additional 5 lbs of Summit Coffee’s flagship Basecamp blend, effectively making cold brew with beer. It’s delicious, and now we’ve got two wildly different brews without having to concoct a whole new beer. Genius!

We used this same method with our fruited West Coast IPA Grapefruit Coastin’which is freshly on tap as of Jan. 14th. We took our top-rated Coastin’ and added grapefruit to make a beer with some of the same base characteristics but an enhanced flavor profile! No need to brew a whole new beer–we just need a few days in a fermenter.

Personally, I’m always amazed at the many ways craft breweries find to punch above their weight. We constantly streamline our processes to make sure we hit the mark with customers while keeping costs down.

I hope you enjoyed my #TedTalk. 🙂