E-Malt.com News article: USA, CA: Latitude 33 Brewing Co. to bottle its beers and expand distribution across California

Latitude 33 Brewing Company announced on April, 17 it will begin bottling its beers at the end of the month and expects its packaged product to be hitting store shelves throughout San Diego County by late May 2013.

The company will begin by issuing three beers from its year-round line-up in 22 ounce “bomber” bottles. It also plans to bottle a number of others from its rotating and seasonal brews throughout the summer.

In addition to bottling, the brewery is also eyeing a northward expansion of its distribution with an initial focus on Los Angeles and Orange Counties, and the rest of California by year’s end.

“Since we began draft distribution this past fall, we’ve been asked about bottles, but our production levels weren’t high enough to meet the demands of both,” said Latitude 33 head of brewery operations, Kevin Buckley. “Now that our production is ramped up, we can start packaging and getting onto retail shelves as well as taps.”

The brewery, which opened in 2012 in Green Flash Brewing’s former facility in the city of Vista, has one of the largest production brewhouses in the county and plans on leveraging that capacity to grow its distribution footprint throughout 2013 and beyond.

“Adding bottles to our packaging line-up will give us more sales options and a much larger and wider distribution footprint,” Buckley said. “That’s important because even though our initial focus has been San Diego County, we’re actually very close to OC, LA and Riverside counties and a big percentage of our tasting room visitors are from those areas. With bottles we’ll be able to reach a lot more customers in those markets.”

For the initial release of bottles, the brewery will be issuing three of its most popular standards, Camel Corps IPA, The Pasha’s Rye Brown Ale, and Vanilla’s Porter, in 22-ounce bottles. Later it also plans to add some from its seasonal and rotating line-up including Camel Corps “Double Hump” Double IPA, Breakfast with Wilford Coffee Stout, and Carolina Honey Hips Strong Blond Ale.

If all goes well, the brewery hopes to move beyond Southern California and add the San Francisco Bay Area and the rest of California to its distribution coverage by the end of the year.

“We think we have it pretty well planned out, but it will really depend on whether we can keep up with the demand,” Buckley said. “We don’t want to short-change our home markets because we’re too busy trying to expand into new ones.”

Consumers in San Diego County can expect to see Latitude 33 Beers on shelves by Memorial Day (May, 27). The rest of Southern California should find the beers in select locations by late June.


19 April, 2013