YOUR AD HERE »

Alibi Ale Works: Still pouring pints after 10 years

With an initial vision of a brewery focused on packaging beer and selling it regionally, co-founders Kevin Drake and Rich Romo opened Alibi Ale Works in Incline Village in December of 2014. After about a year, Alibi began wholesaling their beer and quickly realized they might be outgrowing their space.

“This staff room was busy. We went from limited hours, five days a week, to more broad hours, seven days a week,” said Drake. “We were starting to host events and were pretty busy. We already felt like we were partly outgrowing this space, just given its size, limited parking, and all those things.”

Rich Romo and Kevin Drake
Screenshot

With parking coming at a premium around the Tahoe Basin, finding a second location that provided that plus all the other amenities they were looking for, would not be easy – until one day when Romo was taking his kids to school in Truckee.



“I called Kevin and I’m like, hey, there’s this building for rent and has parking,” said Romo. “Like a lot of parking. Like there’s no parking downtown but there is right here.”

As it turns out, the location at 10069 Bridge Street turned out to be perfect and the Truckee Public House was opened in 2017. But, while having another retail location to help support the distribution model was the next step in the evolution of the business, incorporating food was not necessarily high on the checklist.



Brewing at Alibi in the early days.
{“DeviceAngle”:0.1442434}

“Friends in the restaurant industry warned me to never open a restaurant,” joked Drake.

While still not really wanting to provide food, they settled on the idea of a functional small kitchen that would provide upscale snacks and give customers some menu options that might keep them around for another pint or two. The idea worked … maybe a little too well.

The smaller kitchen wasn’t designed to keep up with the kind of volume that was happening and while at a certain point the initial idea of a nacho concept was received well, it also was never viewed as something you eat for lunch or dinner.

And that’s when they realized they needed to pivot to provide more food that people would recognize as lunch or dinner.

“We hired a great chef who’s really optimized the space and is doing everything possible to be able to put out enough food to keep up with busy days, but it takes a lot of creativity,” added Drake.

It was the success and proof of concept at the Truckee location that provided the business with enough experience to feel confident a similar set up could work back in Incline Village and in July of 2019, the second Public House was opened, and all three locations have been running since.

The culture

With having three locations, it’s important to have consistency across the brand and defining a culture that represents that has been key for the Alibi team.

“The key for me – it’s really become clear – that culture is king,” said Drake. “We’ve chosen to focus big time on clarifying our values and using that as part of hiring and training and performance reviews – really making sure the core values are front and center because at the end of the day that’s what that’s what a business is built on.”

Team Alibi has grown a bit over the years

While Drake also added that the restaurant and brewing industry is not always known for having strong cultural components, Alibi has made it a point to make it real and not just hang posters on the wall but to talk about it and use it at every step along the way.

Culture isn’t only about the internal treatment of employees – it’s also just as important to project that culture outwardly when it comes to customers and engaging with the community. Whether that’s a wide range of community events like the Avalanche Awareness Series, the Pray for Snow Party at Diamond Peak with Village Ski Loft, or just memorable concerts like the Tunes on Tap series that was launched last summer at the Incline location, how Alibi appears to their customers has also built an expectation of culture.

As an additional layer of building outward brand culture, the brewery was recently honored with a Pollution Prevention award from the EPA – a non-monetary award that recognizes organizations for their pollution prevention practices and successes.

Devices used on their fermentation tanks slows down the release of CO2 while maintaining head pressure on the tank at a set PSI which helps dissolve CO2 into the beer instead of totally escaping as a greenhouse gas.

Recent Alibi brewery photo

“By the time fermentation is done, the beer is ideally fully carbonated, or pretty close, and so we get naturally made CO2 made by our yeast instead of CO2 that’s trucked in,” added Drake. “We still definitely need CO2 for a lot of our processes, but once we started playing around, we were lowering our CO2 use through getting higher quality smaller diameter bubbles, better foam, it’s better for the beer, lower dissolved oxygen, and saves money.”

While the process itself doesn’t come without safety concerns and can get a little tricky, most can agree that it seems like Alibi has perfected the process, showcased in the quality of beer they are brewing.

The beer (and other beverages)

First cans photo 2016

With a constant rotation of beers, Alibi has always made it a point to have something for every type of beer drinker. But, if you had to narrow down their most popular by volume, the top three have been the Alibi Pale Ale, Alibi IPA and the Alibi Kolsch – with the pale ale topping the list.

Drake added, “We actually make more pale ale than we do any other single beer, and that’s been consistent now for years, but in our pubs, Alibi IPA is king. Partly because it’s always on, and it’s just reliable.”

Photo of Alibi cans today

Other beers that have developed a devout following include their sour Tartacular Series and the Contradiction, which looks almost like a golden cream ale but drinks like a mocha stout. And while lagers seem to be making their way back into the brewing rotation, one of their most recent creations isn’t even a beer at all – it’s their Hoppy Hour (hop-infused sparkling mineral water).

“This idea came up in the late fall last year and I enjoy bubbly water and sometimes I would drink it to satisfy that urge for beer, you know, just something cold and bubbly,” said Drake. “Then I’d see the hop water trends starting to get some traction and started thinking maybe we can’t make an NA beer right now at our scale, but we could make a hop water.”

With many people drinking less alcohol and the non-alcoholic beverage segments growing like crazy, they agreed the hop water approach was something that they knew they could do well in their facility without major investments, so after a bit of testing, they launched the Hoppy Hour line over Labor Day weekend earlier this year – and the reception has been good.

“Giving our drinkers something to intersperse into their beer drinking times, to alternate, have a beer two, and then finish the night with one or two of these, since you can’t drink beer all the time, we’re like, let’s make sure that people have an option,” added Drake.

“I think the timing is good for this product. It’s also exciting to have something that doesn’t have any serious regulatory strings attached to it. We can sell this direct to consumer, we can ship it anywhere, we can just be a lot more creative in how we bring it to market. We are really positioning this for the beer drinker who’s coming back and we know that the people who don’t drink will find it, and hopefully find it refreshing and good, but we’re hoping this is a good beer drinker’s companion.”

The anniversary celebration

With none of the alibi locations getting a formal grand opening celebration upon opening, the brewery and restaurant will look to compensate by throwing a Tour de Par-Tay on Saturday, November 16 that will incorporate each of their locations.

11 a.m. – 2 p.m. (Alibi Incline): an epic brunch will be served with special beers, brunchy cocktails, and live music.

2 p.m. – 5 p.m. (Alibi O.G. Taproom): brewers will be tapping anniversary beers and cracking open vintage bottles along with tours of the brewery and tunes supplied by Incline’s own, Dan Giroux.

7 p.m. – 10 p.m.: the mustache-themed grand finale dance party will be fueled by D.J. Micah, stick-on mustaches (if you don’t have one of your own) and special beer Jell-O shots.

You can RSVP to each of the events on the Alibi website.

What’s next?

While the business has been public about its vision to round out their operation with additional Alibi Pubs in the greater Reno area and South Lake Tahoe, timing on that is not yet known. For now, the priority is to focus on their Pubs and adding as much value to the communities while refining operations and growing production (both beer and non-alcoholic).

Drake added, “In the grand scheme of things, we’re a very small brewery. And we’re just constantly focused right now on getting that next small increment of growth, but focusing on quality, reliability.”

“As all these new beer brands kind of flood into this market, especially those who aren’t local, but produce beer elsewhere and are coming into the Reno Tahoe market, we’re just trying to stay consistent, high quality, reliable, good service to our accounts, and just keep that foundation solid.”

Alibi Ale Works has two Public House locations around the lake: Incline Village (931 Tahoe Blvd.) and Truckee (10069 Bridge St.). In addition to those beer and food establishments, the Brewery and Barrel House is also located in Incline Village at 204 E. Enterprise St. For information and availability on all, visit them online at alibialeworks.com.


Support Local Journalism

 

Support Local Journalism

Readers around Lake Tahoe, Truckee, and beyond make the Sierra Sun's work possible. Your financial contribution supports our efforts to deliver quality, locally relevant journalism.

Now more than ever, your support is critical to help us keep our community informed about the evolving coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having locally. Every contribution, however large or small, will make a difference.

Your donation will help us continue to cover COVID-19 and our other vital local news.