It could be Five O’Clock somewhere but on National Beer Day it really does not matter.
The Coachella Valley Brewing Co. is one of the local businesses making beers from scratch in the desert.
The manager of the brewery’s taproom, Wesley Gainey, said creating their own recipes allows them to room to experiment with different ingredients.
“Everything starts out as grain we mill the grain into the powder and gets mixed with the hot water,” Gainey said. “We have 24 taps, so we get to experiment a lot because we got to fill those taps.”
The taps with flavor combinations ranging from pineapple, blueberries, and local dates.
Gainey said, “Two of our consistently brewed beers are the Phoenix and the Double Date, they both use local dates form Hadley Farms.”
The Coachella Valley Brewing Co. taps can be found in more than 100 restaurants and bars, but not too long ago the business went through a rough patch.
Gainey said after the crash of the craft brew boom in 2016, many small brewers decided to expand their businesses, a move that was a gamble and did not work out for some owners.
“These distribution networks jumped in and offered distribution where you had to produce a lot more for,” Gainey said. “A lot of brewers got ahead of themselves with how much the production cost, it was getting too expensive.”
Instead, CVBCO decided to shift its focus to the local market once again.
But keeping the business local does not mean less exposure, CVBCO beers will be served inside the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. It is exposure of their brews to the hundreds of thousands of people who will attend the festival each weekend.
Gainey said, “More and more people are stopping on the way out to the festival to pick up beer to bring with them especially now that we starting canning beers, so that’s always helpful.”
Learn more about the seasonal brews on the CVBCO website.
