Genesee Brewery lights up giant keg tree
If you can't go bigger, you might as well go brighter.
That's the the mindset used by the building team at Rochester's Genesee Brewery. For the third consecutive year Genesee constructed a massive keg tree outside Genesee Brew House, 25 Cataract St.
“We added 1,500 feet of lights this year,” said Mike Gaesser, Genesee's director of packaging innovation, who oversees the project. “It gets a light count of just over 20,000. We’ve also synced it to music and running it from a computer inside the Brew House. The tree is synchronized to Christmas carols now.”
This year's keg tree was lit up during a celebration Friday evening. Hundreds gathered in the cold to witness the lighting and enjoy the Brew House's new Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Black IPA, released exclusively for the tree lighting.
“We’re having a blast,” Dean Jones, Genesee Brew House brewmaster. “We love seeing people downtown. You look around and you see 500 people hanging out and drinking beer. Rochester is turning into a beer community and we are so happy to be a part of it.
"This is one of those nights you always remember. It's a wonderful memory and I'm so happy to be a little piece of it."
The tree consists of 430 half-barrel kegs and is 26 feet tall (about even with the second floor of the Brew House). It's about a foot taller than last year's tree because of a taller revolving Brew House lighted logo on top.
► MORE from 2015: Giant keg tree erected at Genesee Brew House
It's 11 layers tall, with the first two layers taking up almost half the kegs. As soon as the tree is deconstructed, the kegs will be refilled and go back into circulation.
Planning for the newest's version of the tree started over the summer. Gaesser and his team ordered the new lights in October and then spent all of November cutting the lights to size (to accommodate the custom design of the tree). Gaesser said 70 separate circuits are used to run the tree.
"We had to test them all to see if they all worked," Gaesser said. "So we actually had the show running along the floor in one of our warehouses before we put it on the tree."
North American Breweries (Genesee's parent company) CEO Kris Sirchio welcomed those gathered with a hearty toast. The keg tree lighting has become a Rochester tradition.
“We’ve always run this like a family business and we’ve always wanted to be a part of the community,” Sirchio said. “It’s wonderful to welcome in our family, our friends and our community into this celebration. It’s not what’s under the tree that matters, it’s who’s around it.”
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