Best craft beer brewery: Strand Brewing Co.
Joel Elliot and Rich Marcello and the ever-expanding Strand Brewing Co. arsenal, which is now available in bottles. Photo by Bernie Wire The story has become the stuff of myth. It’s a buddy story about the cool half-genius, fully strange kid and his somewhat dorky but super social buddy who combine to do something that defies all odds. And indeed, brew master Joel Elliot and one-man sales army/marketing machine Rich Marcello have known each other since they were teenagers and have of late accomplished a frothy miracle. It’s called Strand Brewing Company. Over the past three-and-a-half years it’s gone from two guys and a minivan to a widely lauded, regionally consumed line of supremely good beers. Strand has gone from selling 16,000 gallons of beer in 2010, when the brewery launched with its signature 24th Street Pale Ale, to 150,000 gallons last year. Such is the local belovedness for Strand Brewing, which is located in an unmarked building in the back end of an industrial park in Torrance, that as many as 400 people routinely come to its tap room every weekend. Now, Strand is on the cusp of even greater things. On March 16, the little-brewery-that-could will begin distributing…
Read this story on easyreadernews.com