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This is a community story. Better: the story of a community, if you can find the difference.

For more than 18 years QoQa has been building and nurturing a diverse community with high-quality products, special offers and a bunch of pink creativity. And craft beer has always been a crucial pillar of their portfolio: "Even when I worked for different breweries, in different countries, we recognized QoQa as a great group of craft beer lovers, that will pick up and distribute a full production in less than 4 days." This is Chris Treanor the head brewer of Qrew, the brand new brewery born directly under the QoQa umbrella. 

Chris Treanor the Qrew Head Brewer

A brewery by QoQa? Yes, but let's turn back for a few more steps: craft beer has always been a core offer for QoQa, so when the full team moved into their new headquarters, the decision to create a proprietary brewery was quite natural. That's how Chris came into the game to make this dream happen. "I'm Irish, and in my home country, I started my beer journey with the role of brewer at the Galway Bay Brewery. I was quite young and I accepted the job while attending university and cutting my teeth with always more sophisticated and experimental brews. At GBB I brewed the first Double IPA of the Irish market, which almost brought me into trouble when my boss discovered it". 

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Birth of a Qrew

Fast forward to today, Chris was asked to be the head brewer at QoQa, and his positive answer didn't take so much to arrive. "I had numerous touchpoints with Switzerland and its brewing scene." – says Chris with one sparkling eye to the mountains – "First my internship in Sion, a few meters away from La Valaissanne, then my brewing job at WhiteFrontier. So, while I was living in Berlin, brewing for Fuerst Wiacek, I got contacted by the awesome people at QoQa who offered me the opportunity to build one of the most experimental projects in the craft beer world and do it bottom up. Well, I couldn't say no."

The experimental project is Qrew, which lives in the basements of the new shiny offices of QoQa in Bussigny, Canton Vaud, West Switzerland. Everything here is new, modern, progressive and flexible, like the dream of every brewer. 

The brewing system is just impressive, but the most astonishing things are the values behind this Qrew.

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Community and Culture 

Of course, the first thing you notice on a QoQa adventure is their attention to the community. The brewery was funded by 2/3 of the mother company itself, and for the remaining 1/3 (ca 1M of CHF) with a crowdfunding linked to the blockchain. Now, I won't go into too many details about this aspect (also because I'm not the smartest on this topic) but two pieces of data are really impressive:

1. The rewards were quite interesting, things like a daily lifetime beer at the QoQa restaurant or a special brew delivered at the backers' place directly on a can with their name.
2. The time needed to complete the funding was 22 minutes, 22 minutes to raise 1 million francs. Incredible.

And the community will be even more central in the story of Qrew with the creation of a tap room: a physical space to connect this community in real life. Here Chris aims to share beer, culture, art and as many people as possible. "We want to bring the craft beer vibes into our space. There will be Collab Beer presentations, Tap Takeovers, Meet the Brewers and everything that makes this community so special. But we will also have exhibitions and concerts. And the Qrew beer on tap, of course."

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Distribution

For this first phase, all the beers produced at Qrew will be distributed through the QoQa platform, with single batches coming out regularly. Beer drops for quick distribution to taste Qrew beer at its best.

But, there is a but: a few beer bars are also lucky to receive some kegs of Qrew beer to serve to their customers, and soon, the QoQa taproom will also take advantage of those tasty drinks.

Packaging

Cans, yes, we are talking about cans. The brewery was built with cans in mind, that's why in the right corner is quite visible a super flexible canning line. 

"I that cans are the best solution for beers" – still Chris – "They maintain the best quality, can pack the product more efficiently, and defend the planet from plastic waste. That's why at Qrew almost all the cans will be digitally printed." Most? "Yes, for practical reasons, the beers for the backers were labelled: too many variables."

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Chris' favourite beer style

Qrew is a forward-thinking project with solid values in mind and a clear direction to follow, also in terms of beer selections.

Do you want to know what is Chris's favourite beer to drink, though? Well for this you need to watch the video until the end.

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