re: Issues for Trillium Brewing?

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Speaking of those frozen beers, did you ever wonder how they made money on them? Probably not because you assume people ordered them, they didn't. Trillium wasn't concerned however because those slushies were made with leftover beer that had too much trub to sell in a glass. Hell some of the times it was just low fill bottles they couldn't sell (oxidation, etc.) but throw enough fruit juice in their and people will love it! Remember cellar Sunday samples? Those ended when they realized they could sell misfills as frozen bs instead. Yes those samples you tried were beers not good enough to sell.

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Are there complaints that the slushies are bad? If not, then that seems like a good way to offload sub-prime product and still make some money. No complaints, then no foul imo.

The growler thing is a little more eyebrow raising.

For the record, the idea of beer slushies disgusts me. I'm also not defending Trillium as I don't care about them. Just playing devil's advocate.

Rogue and a few other brewers have been through this before. Not every craft brewery is sunshine and rainbow farts. There are over 6000 craft breweries in this country, and not all of them are run like a profit sharing co-op. Some are are run like a business - a business that takes a lot of capital to start and has low-ish profit margins.

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For the record, the idea of beer slushies disgusts me.

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I've had a taste of a few of them. They aren't bad, but not my style.

Frankly, I don't care whether or not they use the beer they can't sell to make the slushies. Good on them for figuring out how to not be wasteful and turn a profit on it.

If someone orders it and likes it, that's all that matters.

Now, if they were using expired ingredients or something, that would be an entirely different story.

The fact that they pay their retail people as service workers at $5 is an issue, and the tequila thing (if true) is a BIG issue, but the other stuff is starting to sound like petty complaints from disgruntled employees.

That’s when I would have gone - fall 2016, decided it wasn’t worth a trip down just for a couple of beers.

My point with that - if everyone’s tab is $12-16 and don’t tip on beers to go the bartenders get double fricked with low wages. If people rack up. $50-60 it makes it a little better but still.

Looks like they’re shifting to $15-18/hr with low default tipping percentages on their POS screens. Also addressed the tequila issue and crowler fills:

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We are raising the hourly rate our retail employees are paid to between $15 and $18 an hour, based on tenure and knowledge of our craft. Those who currently work for us will move to a minimum of between $16.00 and $17.50 per hour, based on tenure. Our employees already felt well compensated under our tip-based model. By increasing their hourly wages we provide them with a more predictable paycheck. Our customers still have the option to add a tip to recognize exceptional service.

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Regarding the quality of our beer, we hold our products to the same high standard. As a practice we do not add spirits to our beer, we do not market beers as barrel-aged if they do not spend time in barrels, and the beer we fill our growlers with is no different than our packaged beer. All of our beer is constantly monitored by our retail team, quality assurance lab, and production team.

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Instagram post

Blog Post

Their newest permutation 4 pack is $10.20! Either its skunked or they are doing a little goodwill pricing until all this blows over.

Typically not a huge wild ale fan, but I'll go ahead and make the sacrifice for everyone and go check it out this weekend.

It does seem like they're doing a PR blitz to try and correct the bad press they got from this. Which, hey, if they're going to pay their workers well and own up to screwing up, good for them.

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But then there's the licensing issue if the tequila thing ends up being true.

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You've got the word of one disgruntled employee about that -- that's it. Nobody else is going to corroborate that story, and nobody from Trillium is going to touch that issue. You're just going to get more "It's not our practice to do that," which doesn't mean it hasn't been done. But it's denial enough for most.

Furthermore, if it was done, it was done for those beer slushies they were doing at Canton in the summer, and are still doing at Fort Point as of last weekend. Every night those get dumped and a "fresh batch" is put together each day. Any evidence of wrongdoing is long gone. A lot of people are acting like Trillium is regularly dumping spirits into barrels and packaging it for sale because the story has passed through so many different mouths at this point.

I’m aware of the buzz. I don’t work at Aeronaut, but I know my share of people from many breweries in the city and region, especially Trillium. I know what’s being said. I also read your posts.

No doubt the allegations of adulterating beer/beer product are outside of the scope of their licensing. But I think, perhaps, you did not grasp my point — there’s no proof. Yes, it’s a less than flattering rumor, but it doesn’t have anything to do with their actual brewing or aging practices. Its just those stupid freezes, which shouldn’t be a thing anyway. But that’s a different matter entirely. And again, they get dumped nightly. It’s also (to my knowledge) not something that occurs frequently, or even outside of that one instance. Most of the freezes are just their fruited sours dumped into an Icee/slushee type machine with fresh juice/puree, so the whole need to have the flavor of a spirit is non-existent. So, to recap — illegal? Yep. Provable? Nope. Something that will probably happen again, especially now that there’s increased scrutiny? Ha, I doubt it. Just a rumor. Their lack of outright denial is troubling, and more or less an admission of guilt, but...proof? MA might look at it, but without proof they can’t really do anything.

I really think all the handwringing over this is overwrought. I think the big problem was their compensation model, especially when they are legitimately the most expensive in the region. But if you’ve followed, that’s something they have apparently fixed. Bumping the salary of retail employees $10+/hour, so to $15-18 depending on tenure and merit, looks much better. It’s not Lawson’s money, but it’s more than Tree House.