Brewbound 2023 Rising Stars: Trace Brewing

Brewbound [00:12] Hi, I'm Brewbound managing editor Jessica Infante. Welcome back to the Brewbound Live 2023 live stream. I am so excited to be here today with another one of our rising stars. Uh, right now, we're gonna talk all about Trace Brewing, who is, uh, based in the Bloomfield section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And with me today is Aadam Soorma, head of marketing and guest experience. Aadam, what's going on? How are you? Good.

Speaker 2 [00:38] Thanks for having us, Jess. Yeah, everything's good.

Brewbound [00:41] The Brewbound Rising Stars list has a lot of different companies, different breweries. We try to change it up both by geography and business model. And something that I love about Trace is that you guys are so great. At building community, whether you do that through events, you really have tapped into your local surroundings, and you don't have these, these machinations of getting national distribution and like selling into sea stores, like you really, you, you figured out what you're good at, and you're really, really good at it. So, Adam, let's talk a little bit about the events that you told uh Justin and I about.

Speaker 2 [01:16] Yeah, thank you. Um, yeah, no, we're small and we appreciate the, you know, the recognition. Um, yeah, we're traced, we're here in Pittsburgh, PA. We're a brewery and a coffee shop with a small cafe, and we throw a lot of events. Um, yeah, I think that, you know, if I think about the various communities that exist around Pittsburgh, um, you know, we touch a lot of them through, particularly our events and programming. Uh, we have a monthly disco that's usually, uh, on a Sunday evening. We have a monthly hip hop party that we host in the summertime. Um, we host drag queens and performers for our drag brunch series. It sort of rotates if you envision like a, like a knob, stops on all these sort of, you know, sections and tribes and communities. We try to speak to each of them. And, um, of course, the underlying community being beverage, coffee, beer, and the things that we, we do on site.

Brewbound [02:10] Amazing. But one thing you've been able to do through all of these is be like a really welcoming place for groups that might not necessarily see themselves reflected in the broader craft beer industry. And, you know, I think one way you've been able to do that is by not taking the beer too seriously. You know, you guys aren't stuffy and pretentious and And droning on about, you know, hops and malt and all of that. And not to say that the ingredients aren't important, they certainly are, but, you know, you, you aren't taking it too seriously. It's beer, it's fun. So, tell us a little bit about your portfolio. What are some of your favorite beers in the Trace family?

Speaker 2 [02:45] Oh, sure. Um, I think that, to be honest with you, we're really lucky to have our wild and our Fer program. Um, so to your point, yeah, we don't get too, uh, nerdy or, you know, niche, getting into various, uh, hops or grain bills. But if I think about my favorite beers that we've done, Um, our head brewer, Zach Colton, um, comes with a pretty awesome repository and sort of portfolio in wild. And so when we, uh, open ferment in our cool ship vessel and we knock that out and then barrel age it, and then rest it on various fruits and other things, um, You know, the, we did a blended, uh, grisette, which was actually fermented clean that we rested on second use cherries and mulberries after resting in a wine barrel, and we bottled it and we called it Dream of a Day. Uh, that it's dry, it's a little tart, a little funky. Uh, we've submitted that beer, uh, for a couple of awards, and it's one that I'm proud of. Um, I would also say a lot of guests who come from a beer background, and they walk into Trace, and you actually see the two American oak fooders. There's, there's a lager fooder and a Cezanne fooder. Our fooder Cezanne, uh, we added pretend. Myoce to that particular fooder. And so each batch has sort of been like batch 1, batch 2, batch 3. And as we bottle it and let it carve up and um enter service, the Footer Cezan series has been a super fun, um, just thing for folks to experience who maybe have not had Cezanne or lager from a fooder.

Brewbound [04:20] So, these are very serious beers that you're making, but again, you don't take them too seriously. How does this bring in consumers? You know, what, what, what can the average person find who maybe doesn't know a whole lot about craft beer when they come to a trace event? How, how does that work? How do you introduce them to the brand?

Speaker 2 [04:40] That's a great question. I think, um, If you were to sort of approach or ask a conventional day to day regular trace guest, um, you know, their most memorable moment or something that brings them in, they might actually point to an event or a program or something that sort of speaks to them more directly. And the beverage, although it maybe sits in the back seat, it's always there and it's present, uh, because we're all ages, because we open at 8:00 a.m. 7 days a week. These are the things that sort of build community because we were there, we're open. We're able to host, um, you know, a plethora of events because all the furniture and the space is very modular. So if you, if you look at the intersection of our guests and our beverage, that sort of exists at each of these events, which some of them don't even um really reach for beer. I think that uh it's totally cool if folks are expecting a child like you just had a baby, or, uh, you know, if you're a Muslim, or you just choose not to drink, I think that we're seeing, um, You know, pretty awesome stuff happened in our, you know, coffee realm and the way that Joe on our coffee side and Zach sort of collaborate, interact, come up with things. We might rest some beer in a firkin or a cask that will add some tea to and we'll kind of do it as a one-off tea beer that Joe and Zach will collaborate on. And, um, although that is, you know, that has booze, I mean, it's, it's, it's a fun on-site. Experience because that's most of our day to day. We're not in distro, we're not, we're a 10 barrel system and you know, we won't even touch 1000 barrels this year. We're so small. I think we're at the, we're beneath the smallest tier of craft even as a unit of measure. So that's not really our focus. Um, it's more just sort of providing that experience in a, in an inclusive, safe space for folks to come hang out.

Brewbound [06:31] So, I mean, you mentioned, we know about the coffee, uh, that's huge for you guys. But, you know, you talked about you get guests who maybe don't drink beer, maybe they don't drink anything. What, what options would they find, uh, if they came to an event at Trace?

Speaker 2 [06:43] Oh, totally. Yeah, it's, uh, you know, with our Pennsylvania license, you know, we're able to serve really anything manufactured in the state. So we're happy to provide a draft cocktail from our partners at Good Lander, which are a small local brand, um, You know, we carry wine from Pittsburgh Winery, we carry soda from Red Ribbon. We carry, um, you know, just a whole realm of cider and seltzer and, and really anything that we can do, uh, that's made in Pennsylvania. Um, of course, the beer and the coffee is our sweet spot. Uh, those are the two sort of beverages you see on the signage. When you walk in, that's, that was our intention off the bat to do coffee and beer. But, you know, when we take a look at our community and our consumer base, it's totally cool for to reach for a cocktail or a wine or a cider. So we want to have something on for every type of drinker, including the non-alcoholic drinker.

Brewbound [07:36] That's awesome. You know, Adam, I think one thing that's really interesting to me is your title. You know, you're the head of marketing and the guest experience. I think that really speaks to how important that is to trace, is making sure that all of your guests have the best experience possible. And I think, uh, you know, something that we've talked about in our, our previous conversation was, you know, you've really tapped into different niches, uh, around the neighborhood and around the city. And one thing that I loved hearing about was the, the F1 fans that come to Trace. Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 2 [08:11] Sure, um, yeah, guest experience is something I made up. I feel like I

Brewbound [08:16] love it though. It's so good because it's perfect. It really, I really mean this. Like it really shows how important guests are, like at the heart of the company.

Speaker 2 [08:24] Sure, yeah, the, you know, the real guest experience comes from our general manager, Katie and our front of house staff because they're killer. They bring such a flavor of art and culture and just like a vibe to our space that really I would say the guest experience flows through our front of house. For, um, events like F1, um, that kind of came about sporadically. There seems to be, um, sort of this community of folks who watch F1 racing. They, in 2021 and 2022, they had a couple of bars they would talk to, to sort of be that home base and, um, you know, drop down a projector and screen the race. There's obviously a, there's a time zone change and there's various, um, you know, challenges with that, with an international sport. Uh, they came to us, uh, last year, and they said, hey, you have, uh, you have a taproom, you have a coffee shop, you have beer, you have a projector. Could we come sit down and stream, you know, this series, um, of races? And so we went through the calendar and looked to see the ones that do fall in like Europe or Asia, but they're within our hours of operation. Uh, we began streaming it, and it's really grown and Um, about a couple of weeks back in early November, um, we did our season finale party where we asked folks in Pittsburgh who have maybe a niche sports car or a vintage sports car to come and actually park it in our alley next to the brewery. And we just served coffee and beer before and after the race and let folks just kind of hang out and meet these car owners and that kind of culmination or, you know, End of the season event was, um, it was fun to see, you know, the way that that community has come and grown and they feel at home at Trace. Um, it's, it's a sport that I know very little about. The actual, uh, point person who runs that series, his name is Moe. So we interface with him to just make sure that we're able to, you know, basically house this, this group once a week or once every other week, typically on a Sunday morning. Um, And yeah, we're now the home of Pittsburgh's F1 community.

Brewbound [10:30] That's amazing. I mean, cause it's a time when you probably wouldn't have been that busy anyway. You've now brought in more traffic and you've built this really great relationship with this group of people. So, like, just so smart. I'm, I'm so impressed by that. As we look back at 2023, what are you most proud of that Trace has accomplished this year?

Speaker 2 [10:49] Wow, great question. I, I would say that, um, basically, in, in three realms. The first realm, you know, in the coffee realm, it's exciting for our head of coffee, Joe, to travel and compete at coffee competitions. And he was able to qualify the nationals through Baltimore through the, the regional quarterfinal, and he competed at the US Coffee championships. Um, that's amazing. He's like a top 20 barista in the country. And here he's at a brewery, you know, and, and that's, it's. Exciting to see what he's done. He's flown to Guatemala to do selection and to, you know, source coffee that we want to roast through Ghost, his brand and serve. Um, on the beer side, for sure, it's been really fun, as we talked about, to finally have some beer available from our cool ship. I think that when we first opened in early 2021, you know, guests would walk in and see the vessel and say, oh, I want to Drink a beer out of the cool ship, you know, and I'd say we'll come back in 2023 because we're gonna have to, you know, age that stuff. So it's been really nice to finally have some of those barrel projects done and bottled and in service, um, the grisette, the Cezanne, the wild ale, all that stuff has been, um, exciting for folks to try, especially for first-time guests that have never drank beer that's open, fermented or mixed culture. And then the third thing I would say is definitely um on the event side, like, it's so cool to see, you know, the, the folks that who throw our, um, we have a hip hop party called Slappers and Bangerss. And when Ron and Neil came to us a couple of years back to try it as an outdoor day party concept, you know, they typically go late night at bars. We wanted to give it a try and they celebrated their 8 year anniversary of that party at Trace in September. And we shut down the whole Alley and Red Bull came and sponsored it. And it was like, really, really fun to see, like the people of color and the black community and the brown community and all these folks come together to just dance and vibe and have a good time and celebrate what's kind of become one of the biggest parties in Pittsburgh. Um, that, that was exciting and we were happy to host them. And um it's also a lot of fun for our staff. I think that, uh, you know, have, have we, have we not been hosting that party, uh, I'd probably be there, you know, even if it was offsite.

Brewbound [13:02] That, and honestly, as a new parent, I, all the day parties, I'm a big fan of this idea. Genius. Awesome. Well, 2023 was awesome for you guys. We're so happy to have named you a rising star. What can we expect from tracing 2024?

Speaker 2 [13:18] Sure, yeah, we're, um, yeah, we're opening a second, uh, taproom. So we're just gonna keep production as is. Um, the new taproom will be closer to downtown Pittsburgh, uh, near Duquesne University in Uptown. Um, we'll have our coffee, we'll have our beer. I think that, um, beyond that, uh, just trying to honestly. Continue being a good neighbor and a good partner, and a good member of the community. Um, it's been really fun to see folks who don't, you know, usually go to breweries, come to Trace and, um, feel like welcome and, um, like they have a space to hang out. I think that that's sort of uh the guiding compass for a lot of my day to day on the marketing side is to speak to both the beer drinkers and the non-beer drinkers. So this second taproom will be fun and uh in a new neighborhood in a new location. But um beyond that, I, I would say just try to, try to keep on, keep it on.

Brewbound [14:13] Amazing. Well, you're threading that needle beautifully. From all of us at Brewbound to all of you at Trace, congratulations on being a rising star. We are so happy for you guys.

Speaker 2 [14:22] Thank you. I appreciate the recognition.