You won’t be getting the beer you want

Perhaps you don’t care about why not. Maybe you shouldn’t. However, I am going to attempt to convince you that you should. Iron Horse is running out of beer right now and it will be felt all over, but it will be felt in the worst way by our own pub. I won’t digress into the volume vs. variety discussion here because it’s Friday and I’ve got an event to get to but trust me that it’s kind of complicated and the issue boils down to you people drink too much. Just kidding. We are running out because demand is higher than we are able to supply with our old brewhouse. That’s the good/bad news. The other good/bad news is our new brewhouse should be operational in about a month and it has more than enough capacity to brew to our wildest dreams and the wildest demands of the market.

Iron Horse sells beer in 5 western states. In those 5 western states there is probably about 500 breweries; competition is heating up. For better or for worse our business model is dependent on exporting our tasty Kittitas county liquids to markets beyond our back yard. We need to maintain the market share we have in those 5 states and the way to accomplish that is to not run our customers out of beer.

As a local, you might think that is idiotic. You might think we should put the priority on our own backyard. Well, we are, just not in the way you were thinking. My hope is that you too will take the long view and see that spreading the suffering around equally is good for Ellensburg. The revenues from all those other markets find a home in Ellensburg in the form of wages, payments to contractors, commerce with local business and of course my ample salary which I routinely piss away on bike parts at the Recycle shop. Does it hurt to walk into the pub and have only 2 or 3 iron horse beers on tap at our own location? My answer is yes, it hurts so bad, but my hope is that the future includes even more iron horse beers on tap at the pub made in weird ways with expensive equipment by people getting paid fair wages being treated kindly who rent, shop, dine and recreate in Ellensburg all financed by dollars from far and away. I hope that you agree that our short term loss is worth the long term gains for Iron Horse and the community we call home by ensuring more of those imported dollars land here in Ellensburg.

Please email your concerns to adam@ironhorsebrewery.com.