Brewbound Podcast On Location: Russian River’s Natalie Cilurzo on Pliny The Younger’s 20th Anniversary; Calicraft on Going Beyond Beer

[00:00:00] Justin Kendall: Happy Pliny the Younger Week, next on The Brewbound Podcast. Hello and welcome to The Brewbound Podcast. I'm Justin Kendall.

[00:00:19] Justin Fonte: I'm Justin Fonte. And I'm Zoe Licata.

[00:00:22] Justin Kendall: And this week, as we teased, we are going to bring you an interview with Natalie Cilurzo from Russian River talking all about the 20th anniversary of Pliny the Younger. That release starts this week and we'll hear all about it. Plus, we're going to have a conversation with Calicraft, Blaine Landberg, and Thomas Vo from the California Craft Brewers Association Summit. We were there doing the Brewbound Podcast On Location. Jess and I were. Zoe was in Montreal, but she's back now. And so stay tuned for that. But yes, we are back from Sacramento.

[00:00:59] Justin Fonte: How was it? Did you have a good time? Any good beers?

[00:01:04] Natalie Cilurzo: Yeah, we had a great time. The Brewers VIP reception, it's always nice to be able to drink beers that we can't get at home. So I was absolutely tickled to drink several samples of Russian River's Velvet Glow, which is like their Hellas. Delicious.

[00:01:22] Justin Kendall: Yep. I would agree. That was the highlight of the reception for me. It was one of those when you have it, it's like, oh, you got to try this.

[00:01:31] Natalie Cilurzo: I think that's literally what you said to me.

[00:01:32] Justin Kendall: Yeah.

[00:01:34] Natalie Cilurzo: Then some sours from Santa Idarius, which were great. Nice. But yeah, we had good times. We went to Urban Roots for dinner one night. Yum. I feel like I spent that entire dinner frantically searching the United app on my phone to figure out how to get home to avoid that giant snowstorm in Denver, but- You did. We all made it. We're fine.

[00:01:54] Justin Kendall: We ended up making it out of Sacramento eventually. I was delayed a couple of hours.

[00:01:59] Natalie Cilurzo: I voluntarily delayed myself.

[00:02:02] Justin Kendall: Yeah, but it was a good trip. We recorded a lot of interviews. Those will be rolling out in the coming weeks. And we're going to do this again at the craft brewers conference in Las Vegas. And Zoe's going to be there this time to sub in. So we can actually lunch one day.

[00:02:22] Justin Fonte: It's coming up very quickly, like this alarmingly quickly, like just over a month out now, barely.

[00:02:29] Justin Kendall: With that, we'll say, if you're interested in talking with us, reach out, podcast at Brewbound.com. Hit us up, we can connect in Las Vegas.

[00:02:40] Natalie Cilurzo: Yeah, these are super fun, very casual chats about what's up with you and your brewery or what you're seeing out there in the world. I had a great time doing these in Sacramento, so looking forward to doing more in Vegas.

[00:02:51] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I think it's a great format and excited to be on the floor at CBC for a change and have a sort of a home

[00:02:59] Justin Fonte: a home base away from the media room dungeon you typically have to run away to.

[00:03:07] Justin Kendall: Exactly. Let's get into some of the news of the week. And while Jess and I were in Sacramento, I was getting texts that some stuff was going down at Cigar City and come to find out it was true. 12 people lost their jobs, unfortunately. And we found out that Monster is transforming the Tampa production facility into an innovation hub. That's, how did they describe it? Cross category?

[00:03:37] Natalie Cilurzo: I use the term cross-category, but it is gonna be beer, FMVs, spirits-based RTDs, basically all of the things they dabble in across the whole beverage alcohol spectrum. So that's what they're gonna use the Tampa facility to develop and research and work on and test and do all of that good stuff. The bulk of Cigar City products will be made at the Oscar Blues Brewery up the road in North Carolina. And yeah, I mean, super unfortunate about 12 people losing their jobs. That sucks, that never doesn't suck. But this is one of the moves that you tend to see happen after a large acquisition. So we're, what, now two years out from Monster Acquiring Canarchy?

[00:04:20] Justin Fonte: And something that we're seeing a lot of just in general from, you know, some of the larger beer companies looking, reevaluating their craft portfolios and what we're doing there. We saw all of those layoffs at AB's craft brands last year before they ended up selling a bunch of brands to Tilray. So yeah, I remember that we first got the tips about this possibly happening right before I left. It was like Wednesday night. And these situations are kind of weird for us to handle because you're kind of waiting. Like with those AB stories, we didn't know or couldn't get any confirmation on what was happening for a couple of days because they hadn't even told all of the people affected yet. So it's really hard situations to navigate.

[00:05:05] Justin Kendall: We don't necessarily get to move as fast as people would want in some of these instances because we're trying to confirm that things have happened, that people are, you know, there's a lot of hearsay on these things. And what we learned was, you know, 12 people lost their jobs. We learned that Cigar City's original brewmaster, Wayne Wombles, was let go in early February. And it sounds like that there was just a major shift in how they view that property. And, you know, it's not like we hadn't seen signs of trouble from Monster. They put it out there in their earnings report. They took a nearly $40 million impairment charge on the craft beer business. and the hard seltzer business. And they said that they were going to rationalize things. And we've seen how they're treating that craft beer portfolio, where they're shifting almost away from some of these brewery names, where it's like High Light is the High Light and Dale's is the High Light. And I'm sure probably Dallas Blonde or something with Deep Ellum.

[00:06:15] Justin Fonte: Well, they even changed the canarchy name. So now it's Monster Brewing. So it's like total just reevaluation of how that business operates and what they're presenting themselves as.

[00:06:27] Justin Kendall: Yeah. And they see the opportunity is the beast unleashed and nasty beast hard to eat. So it's the F&Bs that they they're really focused on.

[00:06:37] Natalie Cilurzo: Yeah, and Scandata isn't the end-all be-all, particularly for craft beer, but, you know, right now, Circana still separates out Canarchy from Monster Brewing. And you can see that Monster Brewing, which ostensibly covers the Beast Unleashed and Nasty Beast, has done more in Scandalers than all of Canarchy. Yeah. So that really should show you where things are going here. And the thing about stories like this is that it's really important to get this information right. We are journalists. We're not just gonna pop off on some social platform to say like, hey, all these people caught their jobs and blah, blah, blah. We were hearing rumors up to like 25 people got let go. And the real number given to us by the company was 12, which is less than half. So it was really important for us to make sure we vetted all of this out and confirmed it and made sure that it was correct. Cause these are people's livelihoods. You know, it's not something that we just want to go like willy nilly all running to the internet about to make sure that, you know, people know that we got the story first. That's not what this is.

[00:07:41] Justin Kendall: Exactly. We'd rather have it right than be first.

[00:07:45] Natalie Cilurzo: Don't get me wrong. I fucking love being first, but.

[00:07:49] Justin Kendall: I think we all love being first.

[00:07:50] Justin Fonte: We try to do both. We try to do both.

[00:07:54] Justin Kendall: Well, let's get into some other news and New Belgium finally has a new CMO.

[00:07:59] Justin Fonte: Yes, we got to meet her virtually the other day as well. Their new CMO, Rebecca, and I really don't want to butcher her last name, Rebecca Dianushanis, I believe. She is the new Chief Marketing Officer. She was in the beer industry for a few years working at then Miller Coors and then had several CMO type positions at other brands afterwards, including Starbucks, Dollar Shave Club, Land O'Lakes. So lots of experience in marketing for major brands. And she is officially joining the team. Her first day is April 18th. But we talked to her and to CEO Sean Belanger about bringing Rebecca on and about the next steps for New Belgium with their leadership changes. Sean's been in his role since November, so he's still relatively new in the position. He was the former CMO. But they both seem to be very happy with their partnership now and excited to get going on continuing the success of the or the growth of the Voodoo Ranger brand and some of the stuff that's happening with Bells. But really great conversation with them. And we have a full Q&A with that on our website for insiders, as well as just all the details on Rebecca's hiring and where she came from. But yeah, that role has finally been filled, and now the only thing left for New Belgium to figure out is who is going to be their new chief sales officer. So the former CSO had his last day on March 8th, so just a couple weeks ago, and they are currently in the process of finding who is going to fill that position permanently. They have an interim CSO right now. And we asked Sean how that process was going. He said it's likely going to take a few weeks at least. They're looking internally and externally. So stay tuned for who's going to fill out their C-suite over there.

[00:10:03] Justin Kendall: Two things. One, I can tell you've been to Montreal by the way you say Belanger. And two, he dropped that they are on pace to do around 2 million barrels between New Belgium and Bells this year. And I think that that's, that's another big milestone for them.

[00:10:22] Natalie Cilurzo: Yeah. I almost noted that in your document just to be like, Hey, like this makes them bigger than the biggest BA defined craft brands. And that's a conversation for another time, but it sounds like you guys really enjoyed your chat with them.

[00:10:36] Justin Fonte: Yeah, it was really good. You know, Sean mentioned they're hoping to get that to a million mark by the end of this year. And so now they're starting to think about, okay, how do we operate as a bigger business now? You know, they still, they like to think of themselves as smaller craft brands, but they're really not anymore. So how do they continue to keep the vibe or the energy of a craft brand, but operate when you're putting out 2 million barrels is insane.

[00:11:03] Natalie Cilurzo: Yeah, Rebecca joins an interesting club of women who are leading marketing efforts at big-ish beer companies. And I wish that this, I wish this were unremarkable, you know, I wish that things like this were the norm, but there's a lot there. So, you know, Molson Coors has Sophia Cavlucci in the CMO spot, which is vacated by Michelle St-Jacques, who had it before being promoted to her current role. Boston Beer has Alessia Lissage as CMO. Sierra Nevada has Leslie Albright, VP of Marketing Communications, and I'm sure there's more. So until the day exists that, you know, this isn't strange and it's just normal to have women in leadership positions at beer brands, I think we should call it out.

[00:11:45] Justin Fonte: Yeah, notable, some pretty big positions for big brands doing a lot of, I think, leading things within beer marketing and brand building. So I think it's definitely significant.

[00:11:58] Natalie Cilurzo: Yeah, I mean, beer needs to do a better job at recruiting, you know, other consumers. So be interesting to see if that needle moves.

[00:12:07] Justin Kendall: Well, another company that has a female lead on marketing is Deschutes. They have Julie Galbraith. I've yet to meet Julie, but I did get a chance to talk with the CEO, Peter Skrbek, and They are going national with their non-alcoholic beer portfolio, as well as their alcoholic version counterparts. They announced this week that they are going to release fresh-squeezed non-alcoholic IPA, and they didn't even have samples of this yet. They've been selling it into distributors and billing out that national NAP, which they expect to have complete by mid-April. And they've brought all this non-Alk beer tech in-house so they can produce up to 115,000 barrels. That's the total capacity they have. They're not going to butt up against that in the next two years, but they're going to put a den in it, Peter said.

[00:13:07] Natalie Cilurzo: That is wild to me. I always used to think like, will we see another nationally distributed craft brewer in our lifetimes? And the answer to that is yes, and it's Deschutes.

[00:13:19] Justin Kendall: Peter says they're doing it in a very focused way. So they're taking Fresh Squeeze non-ALK, Fresh Squeeze ALK, Black Butte non-ALK, Black Butte ALK, and then draft of those ALK brands. So that's what they're going with. They're focused on chain grocery for the non-ALK brands. And yeah, that's where the big push is for them this year.

[00:13:43] Natalie Cilurzo: Yeah, I'm looking forward to trying non-ALK Fresh Squeeze because non-ALK Black Butte is delicious. Yeah, really good.

[00:13:49] Justin Kendall: Anyway, you can read all of those stories if you're a Brewbound insider, and so much more, including our coverage of the California Craft Brewers Association Summit. We've got a story up on the plans from the merged Blake's, Avid, and Austin Eastsiders brands, what they're going to do next. way more than that that I can't even remember because every day is a whirlwind and you can read a lot of exclusive stuff in our newsletter. So subscribe to that. Before we get out of here, let's play Another Round of Tabbing Out. And one of the things that popped up on our radar last week was a collaboration between New Belgium's Voodoo Ranger Ranger and Tombstone, which I guess makes sense, you know, a skeleton and a tombstone, but they are releasing iPizza A. which is of course an IPA. They're selling it for $49.99, a four pack of 16 ounce cans. Are you buying Another Round, even one round, or we're Tabbing Out on this?

[00:14:57] Natalie Cilurzo: I have a lot of questions. Number one, did you talk to Sean and Rebecca about this monstrosity?

[00:15:02] Justin Fonte: No, we had a very tight, tight time.

[00:15:05] Justin Kendall: We had 15 minutes. Somehow I pizza a didn't make it for 50 bucks.

[00:15:11] Natalie Cilurzo: Do you also get like four pizzas? You should, you should, you definitely should. Uh, I think that's it for my questions. Uh, my ruling here is I want absolutely no part of this. Look, I am a purist. I love beer. I love pizza. I love for them to stay separate. Like, have you ever had like a beer ice cream float? Don't do it. Those are two things that should be separate. Ice cream and beer. I love both of them so much. Absolutely do not belong in the same vessel. Beer and pizza. A beer alongside a slice of pizza. Beautiful. One of life's great pleasures. Pizza flavored beer. Fuck no. Sorry.

[00:15:48] Justin Fonte: Yeah, I'm also going to tab out on this. I can almost understand it as a big fan of like, micheladas or like, clamatos, like things that have tomato juice and alcohol, I'm into. So this is almost there, but then you add possibly some cheese and I'm already not an IPA fan. So yeah, it's not gonna be for me. Also, I have a very hard time envisioning myself paying $50 for a four pack in general.

[00:16:19] Justin Kendall: No. You could get 10 Tombstone pizzas for that. At least 10.

[00:16:24] Justin Fonte: Wow. That's pretty good prices, Tombstone.

[00:16:28] Justin Kendall: Well, I mean, it's frozen pizza, but Zoe, you have Pinky's Pizza in your backyard, so. That's true. Highly recommended. So one more of these and we'll get out of here. You're probably listening to this, maybe on Wednesday or Thursday. If you're listening to this on Thursday, you've missed Alien Abduction Day, which I didn't know was even a thing, but it is on March 20th. And Boston Beer is trying to capitalize on that with Hard Mountain Dew, Baja Blast Mix Packs. They've set up an abduction site In the Arizona desert, they have 100 cases of the Baja Blast variety pack out there. They're doing a live stream on YouTube. They've introduced this variety pack and you know, anyway, it's sitting out there getting hot in the desert. The aliens, you know, they're waiting for aliens to take it. Are you buying Another Round of this being an effective promotion for hard Mountain Dew? Or are you Tabbing Out on this?

[00:17:33] Natalie Cilurzo: You know what? I don't hate it. I think I'm okay with this. Yeah? Look, yeah, the color of Baja Blast is probably about the same color as the light beam that the aliens in Independence Day shot down into, you know, American landmarks. I think there's something here. What if instead of a destructive laser beam, it was a river of, you know, hard Baja Blast? And I could be misremembering this. I haven't seen this movie in 20 years, but I think I'm right. Oh, yeah. You know what? Let's have some fun. Let the aliens have fun. I wanted to be an alien autopsist after seeing that movie in middle school. That's not a job.

[00:18:14] Justin Fonte: I was going to say, it might be a real thing. They had those aliens in court a couple months ago.

[00:18:21] Natalie Cilurzo: Yeah, true. I mean, I majored in magazine journalism, so it may as well have been alien autopsy.

[00:18:26] Justin Fonte: I'm on the fence here, the Area 51 fence. I'm potentially more, not excited, but interested just to see what the new flavors taste like. Because I remember when we did the initial, it was I think my first ever mini consumer group taste test of a Hard Mountain Dews. Baja Blast was one of the most popular flavors with people. It was either that or Watermelon were like people's top choices. So I'm interested to see what the other versions of that look like. And I know people are going to be very excited around here to try them. Maybe this is what gets people, you know, get the excitement back for the brands we were talking about. You know, they're trying to go national, but do people even care about it anymore? I guess giving them more Baja Blast flavors could potentially do that because Baja Blast fans are kind of a cult.

[00:19:15] Justin Kendall: The Fox Mulder in me wants to believe, but I fear that the only abduction that's taking place with Hard Mountain Dew is Boston Beer Hole Sailors getting it from Blue Cloud.

[00:19:27] Natalie Cilurzo: That is quite an abduction. Yeah.

[00:19:30] Justin Kendall: Yeah. That's how they're going national. Blue Cloud is no more. And they're moving to the Boston Network. That's what we we've been told, but we'll see.

[00:19:40] Natalie Cilurzo: The truth is out there.

[00:19:42] Justin Kendall: Yes, it very much is. We'll try and find it. So with that, let's get to our featured interviews.

[00:19:51] Natalie Cilurzo: Hello from the first ever maiden voyage of Brewbound Podcast On Location. I am Brewbound managing editor, Jessen Fante and.

[00:20:00] Justin Kendall: I'm Brewbound editor Justin Kendall. Damn right you are. Where are we? We're at the California Craft Beer Summit in Sacramento. Back here again as a sponsor and we're doing podcasts on the floor.

[00:20:15] Natalie Cilurzo: We are, yeah. So we demoed this last year and we had such a great time that we decided to make it a whole thing. So you'll probably see more of this from us at various other beer industry events throughout the year. But we're so thankful to our friends at the California Craft Brewers Association to help us come up with this crazy cockamamie plan. But we are going to have a series of conversations over the next couple of days with California beer industry leaders and just get the pulse on how things are going in the country's biggest craft beer market. So we've got our first two guests joining us today.

[00:20:49] Russian River: I love it. We're first. You are first, right? Either we first or last.

[00:20:52] Natalie Cilurzo: Exactly. Exactly. So joining us are Blaine Landberg, founder and CEO of Callie Craft of Walnut Creek, California Craft's up, Blaine? How are you?

[00:21:00] Russian River: I'm fantastic. I mean, I'm here. Does it get much better than that?

[00:21:03] Natalie Cilurzo: I don't think it does. No, no, no.

[00:21:05] Russian River: We're doing great.

[00:21:06] Natalie Cilurzo: Yeah. And also joining Blaine is Thomas Vo, marketing director and brewmaster.

[00:21:10] Brewbound Podcast: Hello, thanks for having us.

[00:21:11] Natalie Cilurzo: Oh, thanks for joining us. So you guys brought us some treats. We did. Which I personally very much appreciate. So tell me about what I'm drinking right now.

[00:21:19] Russian River: So what you're drinking right now is our line called Bloom, which we call untraditional ciders. But what they are is basically light sparkling fruit wines. It's a very simple concept that we've been working on ever since the beginning. So it's what if, like we always talk about what if beer was created in California Craft if beverages were created in California? You wouldn't have all this kind of history coming back from Europe. So we have fruits, we have like wine, and so taking inspiration from the wine world and then marrying it with fruit. So this is raspberry and lemon fermented with a rosé wine yeast strain, right? And so no flavorings, just fruit, and we love them. And we've been playing with this for a while now, but Thomas really started here to kind of create this.

[00:22:00] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah, I mean, I love the tagline we put on the back just because I think it sums it up really quickly, which is, we make apples jealous. But the whole point is, my background, both my parents were Vietnamese refugees, and there's not a lot of people in the industry that I think look like me or especially in my position. There's no apples in Vietnam. Our big one we didn't bring, but it's our number one flavor is passion fruit orange guava. That was really inspired by trying to make something for this community that doesn't drink, beer other than light lager. They don't really drink wine either. You look at those metrics and they're really low. But to me, that's not because they have something against fermented fruit or fermented beverages in general. It's not to their palate. And so some of this line is to address that. I love a good dry apple cider, but I'm not going to be drinking that all night, and I want to have a different option that's still light, that's still refreshing, that's still fruit-based, and you get real flavors. There's no flavorings in this, and that's something we really wanted to make sure was to make it a real product. Again, because of our reference point growing up so close to wine country, we couldn't do that. We didn't have any credibility.

[00:23:14] Justin Kendall: Is this considered a cider then, or is it a wine product? It's technically considered a beer.

[00:23:20] Russian River: Okay. Technically. But for all intents and purposes, it's like a dry, sparkling wine.

[00:23:26] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah, it's one of those, like, it's similar to kind of some of the seltzers and things like that. It's a similar classification. We call it, kind of leaning into that, it's untraditional cider, so we're not calling it cider, but it drinks, you know, at least from a consumer perspective, it tastes like cider.

[00:23:42] Russian River: Yeah, you'll make some beer wholesalers happy with that.

[00:23:45] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah, we already have.

[00:23:46] Russian River: All of a sudden they're like, how do we, how do we compete in this new segment? Because, you know, when we started And Calicraft, I always thought of And Calicraft beyond beer, right? I saw the reason why we started in craft beer is number one, I grew up outside Chico, so Sierra Nevada was like, pinnacle for me, and then also dogfish in terms of creativity. And at that time, the laws were so much that the only way that you could really color outside the lines was within craft beer. But we knew at some point that was going to change. And so we kind of look at ourselves as like a Venn diagram between wine, spirits, and beer. started in beer, but then going out. And so that's kind of how we always viewed ourselves as a company. You have to have core great beer. And in Northern California, you better make a God dang good IPA, right? But then once you do that, and you kind of get the box checked, then people are willing to try your other things too.

[00:24:31] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah, I think it really does kind of echo some of the topics that you hear a lot in the brewing community now is how do you go beyond beer, right? But for us, it's, I think we really speak as Californians here on some level, but definitely as just enthusiasts in general. Exactly. I mean, if you asked a bunch of brewers after the conference, what do you want to go get? a cocktail. No one wants another beer, right? We've been talking about beer all day. I think that's really, it's not about moving beyond beer, it's about understanding beer as part of a bigger complex of just great beverages, right? I think brew-bound, that's the greatest example of that concept, is that anything that's crafted and that's a liquid should be interesting to people. It should be the same consumer drinking that.

[00:25:19] Natalie Cilurzo: Yeah. How long have you guys been making the Bloom line?

[00:25:22] Russian River: So we actually started making a variant of the Bloom line in 2017. Is that right? Yeah, 2017. Wow. At that period of time, we called it a spritzer, but no one knew what the hell that was. Right.

[00:25:35] On Location: Right.

[00:25:36] Russian River: Too early. Yeah. Too early. We tend to be too early with stuff.

[00:25:40] Natalie Cilurzo: thing now.

[00:25:41] Russian River: Exactly. So maybe we should just stuck with that. You know, I don't know. But, but so we started making that in 2012. And coming from Honest Tea, my background, right? I came from the non beer world, but also grew up in the core craft market of Sierra Nevada. And so merging these things together for me from the onset just made sense. Yeah. So since 2017, we've evolved the product. It started at like a 5% like really strong like pomegranate blueberry wine. And then it moved into like a lighter kind of almost seltzer adjacent product. And then we realized like where the consumer was, they didn't really understand that. But as soon as we started calling it, it's like a cider, then people like, boom, I got it, right? Because how do you describe to somebody? It's like a light sparkling fruit wine. People are like, if you like wine, you're like, I don't want that, right? And so, but if you say it's kind of like a cider, but not with apples, all of a sudden people go, I got it. And as soon as we did that, it blew up.

[00:26:37] Brewbound Podcast: And just in a weird, almost just very technical sense, you want to drink this in a 16 ounce. You want to drink it more like a cider. When we call it spritzers, if you're drinking an Aperol spritz, those are higher ABV, over ice, 10 ounces maybe. It just wasn't the appropriate way to sell this product. This product wants to be drank the same way you would drink a beer, the same way you would drink a cider. And so kind of pivoting the packaging, pivoting how we talk about it really made that product make sense to the end consumer, I think. Genius.

[00:27:08] Russian River: So who is drinking this? So this actually goes across genders and really across actually age demographics. We do definitely see it trending more towards younger demographics. I would say you're really good at classifying this.

[00:27:21] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah, I mean, it's really for the consumer that You might not be a geek on cider, necessarily. You're not collecting these rare Basque ciders or something. But you do know that you want something better, and you want something that engages with the other beliefs you have. And that's what we hope to do here. That's why we don't use flavorings. That's why it's all real fruit, is that if you believe in eating better, if you believe in finding products that resonate with who you are. Why shouldn't this product be the same? Again, it's not necessarily for geeks. Although we make it in a way, it's dry. We use different wine yeast for each fruit combo that emulates the flavors in the fruit. So there's a lot of geekiness in the manufacturing of it. It's probably the hardest product we make in terms of technical prowess. I think that consumers, and we see it at the taproom, we see probably 60, 40 women to men. So it's a lot less than, you know, I think the previous narrative, a lot of this stuff, like the 90s, you know, apricot wheat or something was like, this is the chick beer, we're making it for chicks. They're like, no, we drink this, we like this, we make beverages that we want. that overlap with beverages we think need to exist in the world that don't exist and finding that white space, which is really, I think so much of Craft Beer historically is, I make, like try my Munich lager. I've won three awards every year for my Munich lager. Does anybody want your Munich lager? And that's not a knock on Munich lager, that's just asking the question and understanding like, well, you have a community around you. What do they actually want? What are they asking for? And what are they hoping someone makes? and what am I good at and what can I make? And hopefully that Venn diagram is where we want to exist, and right in between those two, where you're looking at, you know, marketing is considered a bad word, I think, in the beer industry a lot of times, especially at the small craft level, but marketing really is just business from the consumer perspective. It's hospitality, it's considering the end user, not just considering what you want to do. And so I think we hope that this product, and largely CaliCraft as a whole, is about making marketing not a bad word, understanding that it really is hospitality, but in a distribution level, and creating products for those people.

[00:29:35] Russian River: Well, where does Bloom fall on the priority list for you? For us, it's basically, it's number, in terms of growth, it's number one. Wow. Right? In terms of where we see that going. In terms of priority, in terms of overall volume, it's like number three. Right? And because we started in craft beer, so that's who we are. And at the core of us, like, We love, like, we brought you Gold Star, which is, like, a classic, well-made lager. Yeah, we're gonna fight over that. Yeah, and then this. This was, so this is Carl the Fog. We actually released this in 2017? Yeah. It was our first hazy and named after the fog of California, the fog of San Francisco.

[00:30:14] Natalie Cilurzo: Right, from the palm.

[00:30:15] Russian River: Exactly, and at the time, you know, we didn't have scale enough to be able to put in 16-ounce cans to be able to make it the way we could because we needed to put a a ton of hops in it. And so as we've gotten bigger, we've been able to scale that better hop contracts. And we launched this last year. This is the number one launched hazy 16 ounce can in 2023.

[00:30:34] Natalie Cilurzo: Wow. Let's get into cans, actually. Blaine, before we started chatting, you told me about a very prophetic text message you got in early March 2020.

[00:30:43] Russian River: I mean, yes, I would say without that text message, we probably wouldn't be talking to you today. So I'm very lucky that I've been able to surround myself with people that are just very forward thinking. Seth Goldman from Honest Tea, that was my first company. And then Barry Nailbuff is also a founder of that. He's on my board. Barry, I'm gonna screw this up, he's probably one of the world authorities in terms of game theory and negotiation. He's a professor at Yale. And so he sent me a text message from the tarmat of Heathrow Airport on March 7th, 2020. And literally all it said was, I'm on my way to China, right? I've been meeting with the European Union. I'm on my way to China. I'm concerned that the world is going to go into a very bad place. We should put everything that we have in cans. At that period of time, we were like, What the heck is this guy talking about? We had 1,500 barrels in tank. We were at that point, 70% of our volume was draft, mostly in San Francisco and the East Bay. And we were about ready to launch Southern California. We're like, what is he talking about? But when I first started Callicraft, Seth and Barry were my two core investors. And they said, OK, now that you've started, what are you supposed to do? I said, go sell. And they said, no, listen. And so I took that to heart and I listened to what Barry said and he and I looked at each other and we're like, okay, here we go. So he put in a giant order for cans, like two weeks before everybody else. So we got thousands and thousands of cans, tens of thousands of cans. And we put all this in cans, crossing our fingers. And sure enough, everybody else is going out of beer. We had cans to supply and it really kind of changed the trajectory of the company and saved us long term. And now it's interesting to watch draft come back and our cans have stayed the same.

[00:32:28] Natalie Cilurzo: Wow. And did you ever open Southern California?

[00:32:31] Russian River: Yeah, we did. Definitely. We launched Southern California Craft third week of March of 2020. It's not exactly the best time to launch the largest market.

[00:32:41] Natalie Cilurzo: You had the cams.

[00:32:44] Russian River: No one else had cams. I love doing this. I love distribution. I love wholesale. It's my background. It's my passion in terms of what I do. I had to do a launch video with my, at that point, she was 11-year-old daughter because we're stuck in our house, filming me on an iPhone camera in my backyard and trying to get the dog across the way to stop barking so I can at least send something to people in Southern California Craft know what Calligraph is all about. As they were locked in their homes. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:33:14] Natalie Cilurzo: What a fucking time that was.

[00:33:15] Russian River: Right?

[00:33:16] Justin Kendall: That was nuts. That was nuts.

[00:33:17] Natalie Cilurzo: That was nuts.

[00:33:18] Justin Kendall: But you made it through and now we're here. And here we are.

[00:33:20] Natalie Cilurzo: Here we are.

[00:33:20] Justin Kendall: So, yeah, coming out of that time, though, I mean, now you're taking on a huge project. You're opening up three On Location. That's right. Why are you so confident? Having had that experience, now you're building on some at the brewery locations.

[00:33:38] Brewbound Podcast: Why are you so confident? When you put it like that, Justin.

[00:33:41] Justin Kendall: Now we're second-guessing everything. Clearly, you didn't get another call saying bad stuff's on the horizon.

[00:33:47] Russian River: No. Because my background was wholesale, we started with that first. We did the opposite of most breweries. Most breweries start with a small place, they build a community, and then they put it out. We started the opposite way. And once we built the tap room, it did five times the volume that we had forecasted the first year. And it really helped us build a sense of community, a sense of place, and a sense of brand. And so as we looked ahead, and we said, how do we develop this brand to tell stories about Bloom, to tell stories about things beyond beer, to tell stories about beer? It just made sense for us to open up more retail locations. And so we were bullish on that. We attract across demographics in terms of who we are. And we just see it as a great, not only opportunity to educate people, but also to get consumer feedback to be able to grow the brand long term.

[00:34:37] Brewbound Podcast: Yeah, and I do think, going off that, it's an extension of that hospitality marketing interplay, right? It's, on one hand, distribution should, and retail products should focus more on what the consumer actually wants, and I think a lot of these on-premise, on-premise locations, there's opportunity for that too, to actually really listen to what the community's doing, and I think we've done that really well at our current taproom, and I think we do that well in distribution, and We see, especially as you're coming out of COVID, that people aren't returning the same way, but there is a human need for interactions with other people. We were at the Drake's barn last night and the energy was amazing. Just seeing all the fire pits and as the sun went down, the lights came on. Those experiences of true human interaction, but in what the consumer wants now, which I think is a little more casual. But that doesn't mean cheap, that doesn't mean the food's bad, that doesn't mean you have to drink what we have. Hopefully, we can still see what you want and make that, but make it in a much more approachable way. I think you see that in food, you see the reversing of some of the fine dining stuff, where you see these high-end chefs opening fast casual places because they want to feed the people that are their peers. They want to make places people can actually afford to go to. I think for us, it's a lot of the same. It's how do we make the places we want to go to and the places we're opening up. That will always be the case is that we don't think there's anything like what we want to do here. And if we lived here or and we do live here, you know, in those areas, like these are the kind of places we'd want to create.

[00:36:12] Russian River: How do we rethink the taproom so it's just not focused on beer, but beer is the core of what you do in terms of a jumping off point. And how do you bring people together like they did in Europe, but how do we do that in a modern way that has more to offer to people than Justin Fonte item?

[00:36:28] Natalie Cilurzo: So these On Location, where are they?

[00:36:31] Russian River: So the first location is going to be, actually, so Walnut Creek is a fairly large city. We're on the outskirts. Downtown is literally like a 25-minute drive from where we're at because there's traffic. So the first outpost is going to be in downtown. It's a rooftop deck that is right literally in Hollywood and Vine if you're in that area. Now, especially since work from home has become such a big thing, Walnut Creek was a huge suburb community for San Francisco. We all know what's going on in San Francisco. It ain't coming back for a while, right? And so all these people have come out there, so big opportunity there.

[00:37:05] Brewbound Podcast: And frankly, who doesn't want to drink on a rooftop? I mean, yes. We'd be remissed if we didn't. Oh, you want us to open a bar on top of a roof? Yeah, let's do that. That's cool.

[00:37:14] Russian River: And so then the On Location is our current space is going to be destroyed because they sold it. And so we're building an outdoor beer garden initially for the temporary space. And then they're building us our own 10,000 square foot, two stories tall building.

[00:37:29] Brewbound Podcast: It's the same location. They're just destroying the building we're inhabiting.

[00:37:32] Russian River: Yeah.

[00:37:32] Brewbound Podcast: But that new facility will have a whole new R&D system.

[00:37:36] Russian River: 10 barrel R&D system. brewery, distillery, and winery, bringing everything in-house. So we're going to be one of the first to do all three in the state of California in-house. It just fits with who we are. Then the third one, we're in the final negotiations at least, so I could say this, it's within a 15-mile radius of where we're at right now, maybe a little that way, with a community that's very well-known for making beer and educating about beer. And yeah, we'll leave it at that. But we're very excited about that because surprisingly, there's not a whole lot there that should probably be. Yes.

[00:38:21] Natalie Cilurzo: That all makes so much sense to me, especially when you put it that way.

[00:38:24] Russian River: Yeah.

[00:38:24] Natalie Cilurzo: So what's the timeline for all of this?

[00:38:28] Russian River: So as soon as we get back from here, it's all game on. So the timeline is we are opening up the On Location sometime between July and August. We're opening up the outdoor beer garden on July 1st. The new building should be up and functional by March of next year, which means it'll probably be April, May, June, July, who knows. But I'm telling you what I know now. Yeah. So we'll be online brewing in that facility in June, July time period. And then On Location, which shall not be named a few miles down the road, will be online by the end of 2025. So literally in the next 18 months, we will triple in size in terms of what we have.

[00:39:09] Natalie Cilurzo: That's fucking bonkers.

[00:39:10] Russian River: Yeah. You know, if you're going to go, go big. Yeah. I'd say that's what you're doing.

[00:39:16] Natalie Cilurzo: Awesome. Well, we can't wait to hear all about it. I'm so glad you were our first guest.

[00:39:21] Russian River: Yes. Well, thank you. Thank you. We really appreciate it. Yeah. We've always loved what you guys do and we just love to support it. We're happy to see the community back together and vibrant. Somebody said, grow slow to grow fast. I think we all have to think about that now. The reason why we're bullish on the industry is because we think the industry in general is what we love, what we want to be around, and we've always been able to kind of stay together and together we'll actually get through sometimes and just be patient, cautious, and innovate.

[00:39:51] Brewbound Podcast: And hopefully the next time we do this, we'll have some other things besides beer for you all the time. That's right.

[00:40:00] Natalie Cilurzo: We are here with Natalie Cilurzo, co-founder of California's own Russian River Brewing Company based in Windsor and Santa Rosa. Natalie, it's always such a joy to see you and talk to you. And I am so glad you are here, but you've come a long way to get here. So tell us about your travels.

[00:40:17] On Location: Well, first, welcome back to Cali. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me on the show during the CCBA Summit here in Sacramento. Yeah, so Vinny and I spent a couple of weeks in New Zealand, and we were supposed to fly home on Sunday, which was a couple of days ago. Our flight got canceled as we were boarding, and so we had to spend an extra night in the airport. Then we flew home Monday afternoon, and here it is Wednesday morning, and I'm here. So I made it.

[00:40:47] Justin Kendall: How's the hop harvest?

[00:40:48] On Location: The hop harvest in New Zealand is beautiful. It's looking like a really fantastic year. It was a little backwards for us to be there in March and see grapes and hops being harvested because we've never experienced that before, but it was really amazing. The farmers down there and everybody in the industry are just salt-of-the-earth people, genuinely super nice. They were super excited to have us, and we learned a lot, made a lot of new friends, and we're already planning on our next trip. So if there's any brewers out there listening, I highly recommend you start looking into getting some New Zealand hops, because they're doing some pretty cool stuff down there.

[00:41:23] Justin Kendall: Or the New Zealand Tourism Board. They should give you a free trip for that kind of plug.

[00:41:28] On Location: Absolutely. I agree. Yeah. I can't wait to go back. It's really a beautiful country.

[00:41:35] Natalie Cilurzo: Amazing. So we are drinking something that only comes across every four years. Yep. Pliny for President.

[00:41:42] On Location: Yep. It's an election year. So I'll back up a little bit. So Pliny's been running for president since we opened our brew pub in Santa Rosa 20 years ago. So celebrating our 20th anniversary in Santa Rosa next month. So we started doing t-shirts the first election cycle that came through after we opened the pub and then in 2020 we decided that we were going to brew a beer for the first time and it was during the pandemic and we thought oh we're going to make a beer and we'll release the beer when everybody comes back from being in quarantine for three months, right? Remember when it was three months, remember that? And then like, you know, three months turned into six months. We were like, okay, it doesn't look like this thing is going to really let up anytime soon. So we decided to brew Pliny for President for the first time. At the time, it was Double dry hopped Pliny the Elder. So it was basically our Pliny the Elder recipe with even more hops. And we ended up selling all of it online because we were closed at our brew pubs. And it was really fun, super fun for the residents of California Craft be able to buy cans of Pliny for President and have it shipped to their door during the dark days of the pandemic. And so here we are four years later. It's another election cycle. Pliny is running for president again. Blind Pig is always, always Pliny's running mate. And we're super excited. Pliny is running for the keg party. And his slogan is Hop Care for Everyone. So this year's version of Pliny for President is a triple dry hopped. I said double earlier, but it's a triple dry hop. IPA, it's about 7% ABV. And I thought this would be a really great way to start our talk. And we're releasing this quarterly throughout 2024. And the last one will be released around the election.

[00:43:27] Natalie Cilurzo: So quarterly releases of the same beer, which I think is fun and different. Do you change it up every quarter? Do you do things different?

[00:43:36] On Location: No. No, same beer because we only make it once every four years. So we think it's fun. Vinny spent the better part of last year working on this recipe. So we have a five barrel pilot brewery, which we all affectionately call Vinny's office. Is that in Windsor or Santa Rosa? In Windsor, yeah. So if you go to our Windsor Brew Pub, there is a glass room in the middle of the pub that has a small brew house and fermentation tanks and even an open-top fermenter, a really cute little mini open-top fermentation tank. And of course, because every little five-barrel brew house needs an open-top fermenter. Of course, Vinny needed it. And that's where Vinny spends a lot of his time, and he does research and development on new recipes, trying out new hop products like flowable hop products, which we're having a lot of fun with, experimenting New Zealand hops, obviously, different yeast strains, just different techniques. And so it's been really, really a lot of innovation is coming out of that little brew house. And I'm really excited that we have that for him now because Vinny was really kind of missing that creative outlet when he had to back away from brewing and really focus on running our business. which any brewery owner or upper management out there who got their start wearing rubber boots and working in the brew house and actually brewing all the beer themselves and writing the recipes, you lose touch and you have to back away from your passion, the whole reason that you got into it. So it's really fun to see Vinny being able to exercise his creativity and being so innovative and coming up with new fun stuff. Anytime you come to our pubs, we usually have an R&D series beer on tap. It could be a Saison, it could be an IPA, it could be a Pale Ale, it could be all kinds of fun stuff. And you know that Vinny brewed that beer himself, and it could have some secret ingredient or some new process or something in it. So this recipe came out of Vinny's playing last year.

[00:45:37] Justin Kendall: So are consumers watching him the whole time he's working?

[00:45:41] On Location: Yeah, yeah, he's kind of working in a fishbowl. Wow. Yeah, Vinny's, we've been together, I don't know, 30 plus years this year. Been married 29 years. We've been together a long time. And Justin Fonte of the things about Vinny is that he's very focused. And so when he focuses on something, he just focuses on that thing where I'm like, I'm super, I wouldn't say distracted, but I kind of multitask more. I can't be distracted like us all, but Vinny's amazingly focused. So I'm not even sure that he realizes that he's working during business hours in the pub unless somebody is knocking on the window to say hi.

[00:46:18] Natalie Cilurzo: Well, I think to celebrate 30 years of marriage, the New Zealand Tourism Board should welcome you to their fine country for a romantic getaway.

[00:46:26] On Location: Thank you. I agree. So we'll co-author that letter. Thank you.

[00:46:31] Justin Kendall: So it's not only 30 years, it's 20 years of Pliny the Younger.

[00:46:35] On Location: Yeah, so 20 years of our Santa Rosa pub next month, 20 years of Pliny the Younger, because we made our very first batch of Pliny the Younger, which is our triple IPA that we release seasonally. The very first batch was brewed kind of out of necessity in the winter of 2005, which was our first, within the first year we were open, and we were really slow. We were just trying to drum up some business during the slow winter months, and Vinny thought we could take the Planting the Elder recipe and ramp it up and see how far he could take the alcohol and the hops and still try to make a balanced beer. So that was a 20-barrel batch. I think it I think it netted about 14 barrels because it's such a big beer. So the very first year we released Pliny the Younger in February 2005, it was about a 14-barrel batch. It was 11% alcohol, super hoppy, and nobody cared.

[00:47:35] Justin Kendall: Well, that's changed.

[00:47:37] On Location: Yeah, took a few years, but yeah, it didn't change until 2010 when beer rating websites like Beer Advocate and Rate Beer started to come online. And then interestingly, you know, Hard to Find Beers miraculously became talked about and it was really fascinating how all of a sudden this beer that we thought 20 people had tried became one of the most highly rated beers in the world and we just we had no idea we were totally caught off guard but here we are 20 years later we're super grateful that people continue to come out to Sonoma County year after year from all over the world, and they wait in line, and they enjoy it, rain or shine, and they make reunions out of it. People meet each other, they get married, they have babies, and they continue to come back year after year after year. I can't tell you how many times we've heard these stories.

[00:48:30] Natalie Cilurzo: How many Pliny babies are there in the world?

[00:48:32] On Location: There are so many Pliny babies in the world and it's really fun to see families come back and bring their little ones that are wearing like hand-me-down like tiny younger shirts that they've inherited from an older sibling and even like multiple you know, multiple kids wearing multiple years because, you know, the bigger one has outgrown the, you know, couple years. It's really cute. It's really, really, really sweet. So, so it is very family friendly. It's a seated experience, so it's not like going into a really crowded tap room or a bar. We don't allow standing room during our Planet of the Younger release. And I think it's kind of worth the wait. People don't mind waiting in line for a few hours because they know once they get in that they're going to get our undivided attention. They're going to have two and a half hours to hang out, have three glasses of Pliny the Younger. They can try other beers. We have a very legendary sampler board that you can taste every single beer that's on tap at the time and it's usually more than 20 during Pliny the Younger and it's super, super fun.

[00:49:32] Natalie Cilurzo: I have done that. It is really fun. I was, let's see, I was in I think I was in Oakland for a homebrew contest judging in 2015. And then stayed and spent the weekend. My best friend from college lived at the time in San Francisco. And she was like, we're just going to go for a drive. And she brought me to you. And I was like, Katie, how do you know about this? You don't drink beer. And we had the best time.

[00:49:54] On Location: Oh, right on. Well, thank you for waiting in line and coming into our pub. That would have been during February. So a couple of years ago, we ended up postponing the release due to COVID. It wasn't due to COVID restrictions, it was due to an outbreak that we were having at our two pubs and we didn't have employees. We had to shut down both pubs in January and we were planning to release Younger in February, the first Friday in February. And we were just about to brew more for distribution and Vinny and I made the decision the night before we were supposed to brew more beer. to not brew that beer, take everything that we had brewed, distribute it, and then postpone the release to March and April, and it ended up being a blessing in disguise. We don't know why we didn't think of this sooner, but the time change, you know, made it lighter later. which made it a little more comfortable for people. The weather was better, so spring had sprung and it was just nicer outside. Because in February we tend to get freezing cold rain, it can be really windy, it's just dark and cold. And so that's going to be a permanent move for us. So we're going to continue to distribute Planet of the Younger during February so that our accounts can enjoy a little something special during the slow winter months, maybe a little economic impact, if that helps. It's also San Francisco Beer Week in February, so we want to make sure that we have younger represented at our accounts during Beer Week, and then we'll have our in-person release later in March and April. And this year, it's March 22nd, next Friday. Wow. Coming up. That's wild. Yeah.

[00:51:28] Justin Kendall: Coming out of that COVID period where things were so uncertain and dark, and you're throwing events that you don't know if people are going to come back. We've seen that draft hasn't come back for a lot of folks. But for the most part, it seems like things have come back to normal for you all for this release.

[00:51:47] On Location: Well, things are kind of a new normal, I guess. The release, actually, we were worried about last year. We weren't really sure, because last year we kind of felt like was the first year that we were really coming out of COVID, and we really didn't know what to expect. And it felt really normal. It felt really, really good. The Sonoma County Economic Development Board did another economic impact study, and it was $6.1 million for the two-week release, which is a great economic boost for our community. They're going to do another study this year, so I'll be curious to see what that was. But it was actually more than the year before, so it was really, really great to see that. We're starting to see more international visitors because that started to drop, because we did have a release in 2020. right before everything shut down. And so with that year, we didn't have very many international visitors because COVID was already kind of rearing its ugly head overseas. But yeah, it is starting to feel like normal again. So we're excited that at least that one aspect of our life really hasn't changed much. If anything, people seem to appreciate it more because they seem to appreciate just being together. Because I think we were all kind of know, locked up for so long that it's just, I don't know, I kind of get really excited when I see people that I haven't seen in a long time and when we get together and do really fun things and celebrate, celebrate things we love like craft beer. What else is new for you guys? Well, last Last year I told you that we were doing some construction at the Windsor Brewery and I talked about our lager house project. So that's been completed. So we downsized our sour barrel aged beer program. And so we didn't stop making sour barrel aged beers because we do love them so much. And there is still a little market for those styles of beer. So we're still making all of our fun, you know, spontaneously fermented beers and fruited beers. and stuff, so that's still been a fun little part of our business, and we're committed to that. The other half of that building is now dedicated to manufacturing lagers. So we make two main beers, our STS Pils, which is a Keller-style Pils, and our Velvet Glow Helles Lager. And both of those beers are now available in 12-ounce, six-pack cans. So we're canning and distributing a little bit of cans, just those two beers. Still committed to our 510 ml bottle. We stand out on a shelf, so hey, I'm feeling pretty good about myself. Everybody's like, why aren't you switching to all cans? I'm like, well, because our bottle looks good in a sea of cans. Thank you.

[00:54:27] Justin Kendall: The glass companies must love you.

[00:54:29] On Location: The glass company loves us. And when there was a can shortage, we didn't have a problem. So it was that. We had a lot of other problems, but cans weren't one of them, thankfully. So we're doing really well with the lager distribution, and it's going well for us. So it seems very well received out in the marketplace.

[00:54:44] Justin Kendall: How big is lager becoming a part of your business at this point?

[00:54:48] On Location: Yeah, so of our five core brands, so Pliny the Elder, Blind Pig leading the way, STS Pills and Velvet Glow. STS is up there in the top five and Velvet Glow is kind of right around five or six. And so our loggers are really popular. I was listening to your interview with Peter Hoey And Calicraft from here, from also Peter formerly on the CCBA board And Calicraft current board member for CCBA. And they were talking about we really, we can't wait for the year of the logger. So we're really investing and we're holding out hope this is going to be the year of the logger. You and me both.

[00:55:28] Justin Kendall: It's shaping up.

[00:55:30] On Location: And so are those loggers going to your full footprint? Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's getting them. Yeah. Yeah. And our footprint has expanded a little bit. We're selling a little bit in Maine. So for you East Coasters.

[00:55:41] Natalie Cilurzo: I didn't know that.

[00:55:42] On Location: Yeah. So it's a little covert. We're big fans of Allagash. I know you guys have talked a lot about them. You had your interview with Naomi, which was really, really interesting. Rob Todd is also here. He was the keynote speaker this morning for the CCBA Summit. We're really, really great friends with Rob and Jason. We had gone out to Portland a few times to visit them and collaborations and stuff. It's just such a cool beer market. Found a cute little wholesaler that just really respects craft beer. And so we do send quarterly shipments out to Maine. You're going to sign up for emails from that wholesaler. If you're living up in the New England region and you don't mind the winters there, our beer is available to a select few accounts in and around Maine. Been in Philly for a very, very, very long time. We still love our friends in Philly, which is still an awesome beer city. We are back in Washington. I think we did that right before I talked to you last year, so we are back in the state of Washington. Been in Oregon for a long time. We also launched in Reno last year, and then we expanded our footprint in Reno about a month, or for Nevada about a month ago, and we are officially in Las Vegas.

[00:56:59] Justin Kendall: What is that like?

[00:57:00] On Location: Well, we are not on the Strip. Okay. So there are two towns in Las Vegas. One of them is the Strip and one of them is Las Vegas. So we've decided to focus on the periphery of Las Vegas, which there's a lot of really cool craft beer bars and restaurants. There's a great beer scene, a lot more craft breweries. I'm really actually excited to go to the craft brewers conference in Las Vegas. We don't go to Vegas, we don't gamble, and it's just not really our scene. But I was there with our director of sales meeting with our new wholesaler and checking out some potential accounts. And they were taking us around to a different part of Las Vegas that I had never really experienced before. So I'm actually really excited to be able to go and visit some of our accounts when we're in Vegas next month for CBC. And I think it's going to be a really great market for us. It's a highly populated city now, this place in the desert. And it's really, I think we're not really focused on tourism. We're kind of more focused on the local craft beer scene. So yeah, I'll give you guys some tips on places to go while you're out there that are off the strip that might be right up your alley. That's amazing and very necessary. Yeah.

[00:58:19] Justin Kendall: Thanks for taking time out to talk with us and share Pliny for president and give us the scoop.

[00:58:25] On Location: Thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoy the rest of your time at the summit. Have a great rest of your conference. Thanks Natalie.

[00:58:32] Justin Kendall: Have a great Pliny release.

[00:58:33] On Location: Thank you.

[00:58:36] Justin Kendall: And that's our show for this week. Thanks to our audio team for helping us with the Brewbound Podcast On Location. Thanks to everyone who joined us there in Sacramento. And thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back next week. Go Cyclones.