Happy Earth Day
Victory Beer Blog
Life in a growing American brewery
More Victory to Love
When Bill and Ron first met in 1973 as 5th graders, their biggest concern was finding a good spot to get into trouble after school. Over their 39 years of friendship (so far), those stresses changed: Who to take to the prom? Where to go to college? How to secure a real job? And then, in 1996 how to make their dream of brewery ownership a reality.
So far, the duo has managed all of life’s choices honorably and successfully. Beginning in 2011 and continuing into 2012, Bill and Ron faced yet another daunting conundrum – this time more significant than choosing a prom date. How should they solve the challenge of operating a brewery functioning at capacity in order to feed the needs of their devoted fans?
After many sleepless nights, countless hours of research, dozens of meetings with financial institutions and a few solid drinking sessions, Bill and Ron have decided to take another leap of faith, with their fingers crossed that the Victory name holds true. Victory Brewing Company is opening a second brewery!
We officially signed papers this week to take over an existing building in Parkesburg, PA to build our additional brewing facility. We now take on the task of turning that building into another Victory Brewing Company. It will take some serious growing pains to get the new facility up-and-running. But once we’re at that point (fingers crossed for Summer 2013), it will allow us endless opportunities to experiment with new flavors and re-create old favorites.
In keeping with our “locally brewed, locally loved” motto, the choice to expand was not made lightly. The Parkesburg location will allow Victory to produce even more locally brewed and locally loved beer.
We can’t imagine considering anywhere other than Downingtown as our home. And, while there’s no place like home, the new location was chosen because of its similarities to our Downingtown location. Just as our home brewery recycled an old Pepperidge Farm factory, the expansion brewery is being built within an existing complex in Parkesburg. And just like our Downingtown location is situated a mere 14 miles from the headwaters of the east branch of the Brandywine Creek, the new brewery will be just 17 miles from the headwaters of the west branch.
Environmental impact has always been of utmost importance to us, and it continues to be as we expand. Water quality was a major consideration for this expansion. Nearly eight months of water-quality research found that the mineral composition of the west branch water is nearly identical to the east branch. And just as we have awarded our Headwaters Grant to a watershed stewardship group who is protecting the east branch, we will be announcing our new recipient as an advocate for the west branch.
With this expansion will come plenty of other great news. Over the next five years, we expect to add more than 50 full time jobs to our workforce. As we increase our brewing capacity, we’ll be able to bring back some of our brands that went on a brief hiatus: Old Horizontal, St. Victorious and maybe even WildDevil. Ultimately, we plan to move most of our flagship brewing to Parkesburg, which will allow us to make the Downingtown brewery into a limited-edition draft brewery for more experimentation. By shuffling some of our brewing around, we will eventually be able to bring tours back to the public!
Making the choice to expand has been a big decision for Bill and Ron. But, just as they always have, they focus their commitment on the beer. Their mission has always been to create the highest quality products, and that will continue to be the heart of Victory Brewing Company. We believe that victory comes with dedication to flavor and that belief is propelling us to expand.
Two childhood friends are once again taking a risk together. By taking this bold move forward, Bill and Ron are looking forward to celebrating the next 16 years in business, and 16 years after that, and so on, as we continue to Taste VictoryTM together.
Cheers!
*You can follow us on our journey toward Victory in Parkesburg as we share photos, plans, news and more over the next few months at www.victorybeer.com/expansion.
- K.N.
A New Place to Taste VictoryTM!
Back in 1978, Bill and Ron attended their very first concert together at Philadelphia’s premier concert venue: the Spectrum. As they rocked out to Ted Nugent, Bill and Ron became part of Philadelphia’s entertainment history. Little did they know, 33 years later the Spectrum would be just a memory. And they certainly had no idea that 34 years later they would have the opportunity to put their own stamp on Philadelphia’s social scene.
Philadelphia is an incredible, thirsty, beer-loving city with craft beer enthusiasts who demand variety and quality. In two weeks, when Victory Beer Hall opens, those discerning beer-lovers will be treated to a variety of Victorys, including many of the specialty beers we serve in Downingtown.
It is our hope, that by partnering with XFINITY Live! Philadelphia to open Victory Beer Hall, we can share our Locally Brewed, Locally Loved philosophy with a larger audience than we can reach in Downingtown. And it’s not just about us. Visitors to Victory Beer Hall will find our Philadelphia-area craft beer friends on tap too.
We are thrilled to be able to make our beer more readily available in Philadelphia through this venue. But we want our fans to know that Victory Beer Hall is not another Victory Brewing Company. In fact, the beer hall is a joint venture between Victory, Comcast-Spectacor and Entertainment Consulting International. That’s the legalese to tell you that what you will experience in South Philadelphia will be a wholly different atmosphere than what you get from us in Chester County.
What’s Different?
Victory Brewing Company operates and manages the restaurant in Downingtown. It is the very-best spot to drink the freshest Victory beer. While the brewery is a travel destination for many beer aficionados, the atmosphere at the Victory Brewpub feels familiar, like a neighborhood bar.
Victory Beer Hall is operated by XFINITY Live! Philadelphia and will be a Philadelphia craft beer destination and social experience. Victory Beer Hall allows Philadelphians to enjoy an eclectic mix of beer styles in a high-energy, party atmosphere. Guests will sit at elongated beer hall-style tables, enjoy live music and share toasts with one another.
What’s the Same?
Both the restaurant at Victory Brewing Company and Victory Beer Hall are dedicated to the beer. The VBC mission is instilled in every employee at both venues. In fact, Victory is directly involved in the training and education of Victory Beer Hall employees to ensure a similar first-class experience to the one that visitors now find at Victory Brewing Company’s brewpub in Downingtown. No matter what differences exist in the atmosphere, both venues were built to showcase and celebrate craft beer.
We have an incredible amount of pride when it comes to our beers and our city. We couldn’t be more excited to have the opportunity to share that local beer and local love in a venue so near and dear to us. Who knows, maybe we’ll even convince Mr. Ted Nugent to make an appearance on the Victory Beer Hall Stage, right where the Spectrum once stood.
- K.N.
Terroir of Innovation
The term Terroir comes from the French word terre, meaning “land.” The brewery here in Downingtown, has become a land of creativity and experimentation as we create the beers you know and love. In fact, you might consider the brewery to be a “Terroir” of Innovation.
Why are we providing you with a vocabulary lesson today? Well, the term has been floating around our offices for a few months now as we crafted a some distinctive batches of beers and planned a rare event: Terroir des Tettnangs. This concept featured variations of our Braumeister Pils recipe, brewed with the Tettnang hop variety, all grown in the German district of Tettnang. The only variable between each of the 5 Braumesiter Pils brewed in this experiment was the specific field in which the hops were grown. Terroir des Tettnangs: the geography of Tettnang.
Brewmaster, Ron Barchet, travels to Germany every year for the hop harvest. There, working with family farmers, he selects the very best whole flower hops for our beers. This year, during his trip to Tettnang, he noticed some variation in the aroma hops from field to field. He wanted to see what impact that slight variation would have on a recipe. So he created an experiment. That experiment came to fruition in the Terroir des Tettnangs.
If you were lucky enough to join us last night for our sold-out event and tasting, you got a chance to discover the differences first-hand and meet the German farmers who grew the flavorful hops. But for those of you who couldn’t make your way here on a random Tuesday night, never fear – our Terroir of Innovation will continue!
We’ve been experimenting with recipes and ingredients for years. In fact, our Braumeister series has been an on-going experiment since 2001, where we source rare hops like French Strissel Spalt, to impact our luscious pilsner recipe. Right now, we have a Braumeister Pils version in the tanks that was brewed with a hop that, until just a few months ago, was considered extinct – Rottenburger
Today, we have five varieties of our Tettnang Braumeister Pils available here in the brewpub. And in the coming months you’ll be able to sample the Rottenburger version. The great news is that this innovative brewing concept is not solely available to our Downingtown neighbors. You can find the latest Braumeister Pils near you using our beerfinder.
As we approach our 16th birthday, creativity in brewing still gets us going. Playing around with hops in the Braumeister Pils series is just one way that we get to experiment and create unique products.
Stay tuned for a similar project involving a double IPA recipe and different hop varieties.
- K.N.
Giving Thanks
It’s the time of year when many of us take some time away from the hustle and bustle of daily life to step back and really examine all that we have to be thankful for.
We here at Victory are lucky. Not many people get to spend their days in a brewery, surrounded by imported malts and whole flower hops and enthusiastic beer-lovers, with the freshest beer around just a few steps away.
We are lucky enough to be based in Downingtown, a town that embraced us since we were a company with just two guys who liked beer, and who thought they could make a pretty good version themselves.
Most of all, we are lucky that there are people who go out of their way to buy Victory beer from their local retailer, will travel to the brewpub and sometimes spend their Saturday night waiting a little bit longer for a table than they wanted to.
We may never be able to fully put into words how thankful we are for our fans, both near and far, but we do our best throughout the course of the year to support the community that has been so supportive of us.
One of the ways we were able to do that this year was by donating more than $45,000 worth of beer, merchandise and money to charities that benefit the communities surrounding our brewery in Chester County.
We were a major sponsor of our very own Berry Woodrow McLaughlin’s quest to become the Woman of the Year, raising a significant amount of money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in the process.
The water that goes in Victory beer comes from the east branch of the Brandywine Creek. Keeping that water clean is important to us, (and to everyone who drinks Victory beer), so this year we created the first ever Headwaters Grant. The grant will be awarded annually, to watershed protection groups. We awarded the first-ever Headwaters Grant in May to The Guardians of the Brandywine. Since then, they’ve been working hard to encourage residents to take personal responsibility for the creek through their My Creek program.
Over the course of the year we brought our beer to events like Bike Fresh, Bike Local, Maysie’s Farm Fest, Honey Fest, and the SPCA’s BrewBQ and Forget Me Not Gala. Then, we shared the proceeds from these events with these groups.
But the bulk of that money went to non-profit organizations that submitted requests through our online Community Stewardship Form. We were able to donate more to non-profit organizations in Chester County than ever before, and though we weren’t able to donate to every organization that put in a request, we did our best to accommodate as many as possible.
As Victory grows in the coming years, we will continue to grow our charitable giving, expanding beyond just non-profit groups in Chester County to charities everywhere there are Victory fans.
It is just a small way that we can say thanks and support the community that has supported us.
Dark Wednesday Recap
We’d like to thank everyone who came out to Victory to celebrate Dark Wednesday with us. The line of Dark Intrigue enthusiasts started to form at 6:30 a.m. One of our earliest liner-uppers left Richmond, Virginia at 3:00 a.m. to secure his place. One beer-loving duo stayed up all night, drove from near New York City and arrived in Downingtown at 4:30 a.m. They slept in their car until another early-riser woke them up at 6:30 a.m. and ended up second and third in line. Still others traveled from North Carolina, Oklahoma and Colorado.
Photo Credit: @JeffTincher
We had a great time talking with all of our beer-loving travelers and with the more than 400 avid beer fans who celebrated the release of Dark Intrigue with us. Despite a few scattered showers, hundreds of people joined in the Dark Wednesday festivities. Thanks to our friends at One Village, we were able to keep them warm with free coffee. And our own Victory Brewpub provided some tasty treats to enjoy as we all waited for sales to begin. The doors opened promptly at 11:30 a.m., and by 2:30 p.m. all the cases of Dark Intrigue were all gone.
Photo Credit: Downingtown Dish
If you weren’t able to make it here to get your Dark Intrigue and partake in the fun of Dark Wednesday, check out what Downingtown Dish and IDrinkGoodBeer.com had to say about the event.
The brewery allotment of Dark Intrigue sold out in just three hours, but more cases are leaving the brewery on trucks today, headed to 18 states across the country. If you’re looking to give the bourbon barrel-aged Storm King Stout a taste, contact your local wholesaler or use our beerfinder. DISCLAIMER: Beerfinder only reports on where the beer has been delivered in the past 60 days. If you see Dark Intrigue listed at your local retailer, call them to ensure they haven’t sold out yet.
And to those of you who came out and waited for Dark Intrigue, thank you again for helping us to make such a successful, fun event. Cheers!
The Circle of Life
If you’ve spent any time on our website, you’ve likely noticed our passion for sustainable business and our dedication to our local community.
Those two passions come together in many aspects of our business. One in particular, where the spent grain from our brewing process becomes food for local livestock, and later, food for our restaurant guests. That’s Victory’s version of the circle of life. (Cue: Disney theme song now).
As part of the brewing process, we generate a whopping 25,000 pounds of spent grain for every 24 hours we brew. Spent grain consists mainly of the barley husks that remain after we’ve extract the simple sugar from the malt during the lauter process. We retain the liquid sugar, known as wort, and then toss in some whole flower hops, add yeast, and let it ferment until it becomes one of the beers you know and love.
While we enjoy the various HopDevils, Primas and Monkeys (oh my!) that are produced from the malted barley, local livestock chow down on the sweet, oatmeal-like spent grain as part of their dinner. In fact, we’ve been told that our flavorful grain is responsible for turning some of the cows into food snobs. After tasting Victory, no other feed meets their standards. Sound familiar?
Local farmers like Nelson Beam make this circle of life possible. He comes to the brewery four times per week, empties our silo of the spent grain, and helps us make room for the next batch.
We visited with Nelson’s kids at a recent 4-H Livestock auction where we
bid on one of their hogs. Back in the office, we secretly named the piggy “Scrapple.”
The process comes full circle when we buy Nelson’s meat and serve it in our brewpub.
It’s the Circle of Life. And it moves us all…
- K.N.
Locally Brewed, Locally Loved
Last week, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story about Budweiser’s new “215” beer. Bill was interviewed for the article, and it really got us thinking about what local means to beer drinkers and to Victory Brewing Company.
If you haven’t read the article yet, the basics are simple: Anheuser-Busch InBev recently trademarked the name “215” (as well as a slew of other area codes). It appears that Budweiser will be brewing a bunch of of area code-named beers in the coming months. The locally focused names are likely an attempt for the big guys to tap into craft beer enthusiasts and supporters of local products.
Personally, we are confident that residents of Chester County, Pa. and the surrounding areas won’t be fooled. Being locally focused is more than just a name or a location. It is about action. Lucky for us, we have nothing to prove. As many of our t-shirts and branded items say, Victory is “Locally Brewed, Locally Loved.” The reason for the local love? We give love to get love.
If you head over to Philly.com to read the article, you’ll see dozens of great comments. One comment from AreaMan summed it up well: “I’ll gladly pay for a local beer that will reinvest that money back into the local economy and community. Think of all the tax money generated when you buy local- the tax you pay on the beer, the tax the brewers pay on the beer, the taxes the brewery employees pay and so on. It just makes sense to buy local.”
He’s absolutely right. Victory Brewing Company has always believed in reinvesting and give backing. Please allow us to toot our own horn for a moment…
Back in May, we launched our Headwaters Grant program. A portion of every bottle of Headwaters Pale Ale sold is collected and distributed to environmental advocacy groups through the Headwaters Grant. Our first recipient is The Guardians of the Brandywine who protect the creek that directly impacts our beer and our community.
Victory Brewing Company also works to sustain local agriculture and promote animal welfare. We sponsor a number of events that benefit local farms and growers. We bring our beer to, and share our proceeds with, events like like Bike Fresh, Bike Local and Maysie’s Farm Fest. Similarly, we participate in numerous events to support the Chester County SPCA like our BrewBQ and Forget Me Not Gala.
Another fun fact: both the spent grain from our brewing process and the unused non-consumer food from our restaurant (for example: prepped potato chips that are never served) are donated to local farms to feed the cows and pigs. Later, we buy those same cows and pigs back to serve some great, locally raised dishes.
As you can see, Victory really does support the “215” (and 610 and 484 for that matter). If you are looking for support for your community outreach effort, complete a Community Stewardship Form to let us know how we can help. We want to be involved where we can and consider each and every request we receive.
- K.N.
Fifteen Years Of Character(s)
Flame-throwing grills, ex-brewers claiming the glory, a dismissive landlord and ‘touchy’ pals who can barely control themselves… who knew that Victory could survive such a tumultuous first fifteen years!? But outside of the glorious chaos that typifies new businesses of all types, there is a groundswell of love and respect voiced by the ‘Characters’ that have lent their voice to telling the story of Victory’s first fifteen years of operation.
See and hear it here, in Fifteen Years Of Character(s), the video we commissioned to celebrate our recent anniversary on February 15.
Recognizing that we simply make beer, and that it is your patrons and supporters who make a business a success, we chose to let a few of those other folks shed light on some of the untold stories of Victory.
Enjoy!
Bill & Ron, the Brewmasters of Victory
Beer Inspired Baking
Blueprints are common at Victory…but for a cake!
Chef Lynn Tilyou of Victory Brewing Company suffers from insomnia. This paired with her past career helping her mother as a cake decorator, and our 15 year anniversary on the horizon, has given the midnight creative spark, that led to this bold undertaking. The 15th Anniversary cake is a live motion replica of the brewing process, and will include many of the steps, from brewing to pouring beer into a pitcher. Don’t miss this sweet concoction and creative madness that abounds here in our brewery restaurant on February 15th when we’ll celebrate ’15 Years of Character’. We’ll kick things off at 5pm with the first pour of our new brand Headwaters Pale Ale. Click here for event details and to read more about the anniversary celebration.