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 bottled beer (a launch that will begin with an event at the brewery that day).
“Strand in a bottle.” Marcello says. “Why is that important? For the first time, after over three years, people now can finally come home, open the refrigerator, and pull out a Strand beer and be welcomed home by Strand Brewing. It’s a milestone. Up until now, people had to go to a bar or drive to the brewery to have this beer. Now you can pick it up off a store shelf and come home at the end of a long hard day of work, open up the door and have a Strand in the fridge. Who doesn’t like to hear, ‘Welcome home?’ “
But this isn’t just a story of an expanding quantity of beer emanating for an inconspicuous warehouse. It’s about quality. The seldom-seen Elliot – “You know that rare animal at the zoo, the one you can’t see but you know it’s there because it says so on the sign? That’s me,” he says – spends hundred-hour weeks concocting beers, usually focused on meeting an ever-expanding demand. Now he is more able to push the envelope of what a beer can be.
“One way we are really able to expand now is in artistic freedom… Basically, my easel is free again. I can put my canvas up and paint away. Whereas, until now, we have really been working for all these people, and happy to do so, but they all expect the same beer every time, versus let’s kind of spread our wings a little bit.”
A good example of Strand taking flight was the recently brewed Bagheera East IPA 3rd Anniversary beer.
“Take the Bagheera. That is a unique beer. It has cumin, clove, curry, cinnamon, toasted coconut, ghost chili, fresh ginger root, black pepper, tamarind fruit,” Marcello says. “Did I leave anything out?”
“Peeled by hand,” Elliot adds.
“Right. For the tamarind we spent about nine hours peeling. A nightmare.”
But also a dream come true. As Marcello recalled, a friend recently called and remarked how nice it must be “to work for yourself.” Marcello started laughing.
“I work for probably
50,000 people, because I work for him,” Marcello says, pointing to Elliot. “And I work for all of the people who gave us money to start out, and for my wife and for my kid. And I work for everyone who sells my beer, my distributors, Wine Warehouse. I work for everybody who sells our beer as a vendor, for every bartender who recommends it, for every waiter that sells it. I work for everyone who drinks it. If something isn’t right they can call me and say what is going on. I don’t work for myself. I work for so many people it’s silly. And it’s wonderful.”
3520 Telo Ave, Torrance, (310) 517-0900, www.strandbrewing.com. Tap room hours Thursday, Friday 4 to 9 p.m., Sat. noon to 8 p.m., and Sunday noon to 6 p.m.
Runner-up: El Segundo Brewing 140 Main St, El Segundo, (310) 529-3882, www.elsegundobrewing.com