Beginning this week, we’re officially rolling out 750mL swing-top growlers, and we’re rather excited about it. Here’s why.
We’re a bit obsessive when it comes to packaging design. I spend a good deal of my idle time cruising around design blogs, Instagram, and Pinterest, searching out the breweries (and, more often than not, wineries) who are killing it with clean, classy branding*. We’ve always felt that beer is about the experience as a whole – not simply the liquid that’s inside the bottle – and that branding should be approached with just as much respect, effort, and consideration that goes into the brewing process. So when it became obvious that our taproom needed to offer a to-go container in a smaller size than the standard half-gallon growler, we knew there was going to be a hell of a lot of deliberation.
*A few of my personal favorites: Bellwoods Brewery (Toronto, ON), Allagash Brewing (Portland, ME), and Side Project Brewing (Maplewood, MO).
Our first thought was the 32oz. Boston Round, a simple and elegant straight-walled container that we thought was a good fit with our minimalistic brand identity. But we had heard that they weren’t pressure rated for beer, and after one of mine exploded on my nightstand at five o’clock in the morning, the Boston Round was immediately jettisoned from the list.
As taproom draft sales increased, the availability of our 750mL bottles dropped substantially. We decided that the only beers we’d be bottling for the foreseeable future would be from our Special Release line, and on top of that, only those that would be ageable. Flagships and seasonals would no longer be packaged, and thus the demand for a container of that size remained unmet. We needed a different option, and one in particular fell perfectly into place.
A Friday night visit to the much-lauded Tree House Brewing Co. in my home state of Massachusetts provided the solution. We had seen 750mL swing-top growlers before, namely from the similarly hyped Hill Farmstead, but I had never really had a first-hand experience with them. But upon seeing the rustic wooden bar within the butts-to-nuts-crowded Tree House taproom laden with a small army of swing-top 750s, each adorned with their signature manila mail tags, I fell in love. These suckers were gorgeous, and given that we were already packaging the occasional bottle release in the same champagne-style bottles, they were just what we needed.
Turns out that they were not only a.) incredibly difficult to get a hold of, but also b.) rather difficult to fill with our current draft system. So after a large amount of sleuthing and the conversion of all sixteen of our primary bar’s taps over to flow-control faucets, we’re pleased to announce that at long last, we’re finally releasing Brew Gentlemen Beer Co. 750mL swing-top growlers.
And so, for the BYOB enthusiast, the beer trader, and anyone who’s ever expressed their undying love for a certain offering but lamented their inability to consume an entire half-gallon of it, we’ve finally got you covered.
750mL growlers will be available in the taproom beginning Wednesday, July 1st. Pricing can be found on our live menu on our website.