{"id":10087,"date":"2014-10-08T14:54:26","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T21:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/?p=10087"},"modified":"2014-10-08T14:54:26","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T21:54:26","slug":"chuckalek-brewing-business-with-boston-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/2014\/10\/08\/chuckalek-brewing-business-with-boston-beer\/","title":{"rendered":"ChuckAlek: Brewing Business with Boston Beer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Great American Beer Festival is obviously a special time for people in the craft beer community. With 49,000 people flocking to the festival over three days, big\u00a0breweries get a chance to pour their beers for people who otherwise wouldn\u2019t be able to try them. Brewers also wait with baited breath as judging panels decide which breweries go home with new hardware for their trophy cases. For Ramona\u2019s ChuckAlek Independent Brewers<\/a>, this year\u2019s Great American Beer Festival turned out to be extra-special, as they were named the winner of the Samuel Adams \u201cBrewing and Business Experienceship\u201d program.<\/p>\n

Every year, Samuel Adams picks one brewery from their \u201cBrewing the American Dream\u201d funding program and awards them the opportunity to participate in the Experienceship program. The purpose of the program is to give one promising brewery extended mentoring from key people at the Boston Beer Company, which produces Samuel Adams beers.<\/p>\n

Beyond gaining brewing, distribution, packaging and ingredient sourcing knowledge, the winner gets to brew a collaboration beer with Samuel Adams, and they also get funding to attend industry events like the Great American Beer Festival.<\/p>\n

\"Boston<\/a>
Boston Beer co-founder Jim Koch (left) with ChuckAlek co-founders Marta Jankowska & Grant Fraley. Photo taken at the Great American Beer Festival by Don Ayres<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The funding program initially caught the eye of ChuckAlek co-founders Grant Fraley and Marta Jankowska when they were looking to expand in late 2013. \u201cWe got a loan from Sam Adams about a year ago to help actually start to pick up our distribution,\u201d said Fraley. \u201cIt got us to the point of being probably the widest-distributed nanobrewery in San Diego, and we\u2019ve gotten a lot of great response from our distribution.\u201d<\/p>\n

ChuckAlek\u2019s passion for brewing on a small scale is what grabbed the attention of Samuel Adams founder, Jim Koch. \u201cI think they\u2019re a model for the next wave of craft brewers that are going to take us to 6,000, 8,000 and eventually 10,000 breweries in the US,\u201d said Koch. \u201cIt\u2019ll be passionate, very small-scale breweries where the business model is not getting into Vons, Ralph\u2019s and Safeway, but small breweries with tasting rooms that maybe sell growler fills, and have a very small distribution to a handful of accounts. That\u2019s the business model that can get us thousands more breweries.\u201d<\/p>\n

What can we expect out of ChuckAlek as a result of this mentorship program? Fraley lays out some short-term and long-term visions. \u201cWe\u2019re really looking forward to the collaboration brew with them, which will help us get our name out there even more,\u201d said Fraley. \u201cWe\u2019re based in Ramona, but we\u2019re part of that larger community of San Diego. We\u2019re still figuring out our next steps, but we\u2019ll definitely be growing up and ramping up over the next year and a half.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Great American Beer Festival is obviously a special time for people in the craft beer community. With 49,000 people flocking to the festival over three days, big\u00a0breweries get a chance to pour their beers for people who otherwise wouldn\u2019t be able to try them. Brewers also wait with baited breath as judging panels decide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-san-diego-beer-beverage-news","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdtr4y-2CH","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}