Tap Handle #821: Sour Cellars

March 22, 2024

Tap Handle #821: Sour Cellars

Tap size: just over 8" tall, 4.25" wide

Rarity: 10 or less seen, hand-made

Mounting: internal 3/8" nut

This is such an incredible tap that I was excited to get my hands on one for the Museum when I was able to connect with the owner of Sour Cellars, Bryan Doty. Bryan was gracious enough to not only give me some information about the brewery, but also provided insight into some of the tap details:

"Steven Suiter (@stevensuiterart on Instagram) is our artist that does all of our drawings for labels and merchandise. He is the one who came up with the creature design that we used for the tap handle. It was one of two creatures that he drew holding up a banner with our name on it. I like the creature design so much I have adopted it as a sort of brewery mascot. Another local artist, Cameron Hajagos (@highsyrup on Instagram) offered to make a tap handle with the creature design. He sculpted it for a mold. Each one is poured from resin and hand painted. So far, he has only made 30 of them for us."

The "creature" is hanging on to a piece of wood, with the name of the brewery sculpted in raised white letters running down the face of the wood. The skull face, frog-like head, pointed hat, and extremely long arms all lend an air of fantasy and mystery to the creature. This tap is used for all of the brewery's varieties, but I've chosen to profile their Pyrotechnic Pleasantries. All of the brewery's beers have crazy and unique names, but for some reason that one stands out to me. While this tap is just a little bit shorter than average, it makes up for that with extra width. Many thanks to Bryan for taking the time to reply to my questions. Read on to find out more about Sour Cellars...

Sour Cellars Brewing was founded in 2015 in Rancho Cucamonga, California by the husband and wife team of Bryan and Chintya Doty. Bryan was formerly a CNC programmer and Chintya was working in the hotel industry. Bryan was drinker of domestic lagers until he began homebrewing in 2011 as a hobby in order to make cheap beer. The more he got into the hobby, the more he gravitated towards unique styles. When he started home brewing, he was disappointed to find out that all the yeast that labs sell to home brewers and commercial brewers are strains that were isolated by breweries about a hundred years ago. He wondered why labs had stopped looking for yeast when there had been so many technological improvements. About 3 months after he started brewing, he bought a microscope and isolated his own yeast from flowers and cactus fruit in the Arizona desert. He was also fascinated by Belgian lambic beers and spontaneous fermentation, in which all fermentation was done by wild yeast and bacteria, and farmhouse beers, which had a completely different brewing environment compared to production breweries. He began isolating yeasts, which over time grew into a large catalog of strains.

The Dotys spent several years saving money to fund the brewery. They were saving for a different goal when they first got married, but the housing market crash of 2008 altered their plans and they used the opportunity to invest. They sold those investments to open the brewery, and chose Rancho Cucamonga because Bryan had taken a job in the area a few years before. They needed a place with affordable rent (relative to Los Angeles) so that they could age the beer for a year before opening. They found a warehouse-style building in an industrial complex that was able to house the barrels needed for aging sours. They also created a Victorian-style taproom with antique furniture and tapestries because they didn't want it to look like a warehouse/garage, like so many other taprooms. Sour beer was an old style, so they figured the tasting room should have an old feeling as well.

Although the first beer was brewed in 2016, it took a year to age, and the brewery didn't officially open until 2017. They were just a husband and wife team with no partners or investors. Bryan handled the production and maintenance, while Chintya took care of sales and accounting. The biggest challenge for the brewery was that they chose the sour niche, because sour isn't for everyone. However, they were able to grow the business by attending international festivals and exporting up to 50% of their production. They have poured their beer at festivals in Denmark, Italy, Lithuania, Japan, Finland, and Sweden, and have also exported to Australia, China, and Taiwan (the biggest sour festivals are overseas in Denmark and Italy). In Denmark, Bryan collaborated with Mikkeller for their Danish beer club and Chintya curated the food, and in 2022, Sour Cellars executed a tap takeover at Taihu Brewing in Taipei, Taiwan.

The Dotys continued to grow the business by making regular (non-sour) beer, as well as wine, cider, and mead. They scaled up production on the regular beers by adding more stainless steel fermenters. Everything at Sour Cellars spends over twelve months in the barrel, some for over 4 years and counting. The warehouse has upward of 300 oak barrels, formerly used for red and white wines, each now incubating a batch of original sour beer during some stage of its lifestyle, with a lot of trial and error involved. Sour Cellars produces about 20 different beers each year, depending on which fruits might be available or in season, and fruit selection is critical. Bryan travels to farmer’s markets to taste the varieties and seek relationships with the growers, preferring whole, local, organic fruit whenever possible.

Sour Cellars' Pyrotechnic Pleasantries is a blend of 54 months barrel aged brown ale, 26 months golden sour ale, 19 months saison & 6 months spontaneous fermentation golden sour ale, re-fermented with strawberries. It has been conditioned since May 2021.