Beer fans outraged by Trillium Brewing controversy

Fans of Boston-based brewery Trillium are calling for a boycott on its products over controversy surrounding management’s treatment of staff.

 

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A post shared by Trillium Brewing Company (@trilliumbrewing) on Nov 21, 2018 at 6:44am PST

Current and former employees have said the brewery forced many members of staff to re-apply for their jobs. Some were also offered identical roles at slashed rates of pay.

The news erupted after a person who claims to be a former employee posted in an online forum on Beer Advocate to air their grievances.

“after working for trillium for 3+ years, employees were (after interviewing for the jobs they already had) offered $3/hr less to work the exact same job across the street,” it said. “That may not sound like a lot, but that is a 37.5% cut that would be ~$6000 a year for full time staff.”

The ex-staffer also said that Trillium also sells growlers and frozen beers made with “misfits” and brews which were “not good enough to sell.”

“Trillium growlers are almost exclusively filled with beer from trub kegs,” it said

“For those that don’t know, trub is the hop/yeast particulate that settles on the bottom of the fermenter.

“All the “good” beer goes into cans and taproom kegs. The last few kegs of each batch are full of trub and those get allocated to growlers.”

Since then, fans of the Trilliam, which has developed a substantial cult following and is one of the US’ most respected craft brewries, have taken to social media to voice their outrage, and call on others to boycott the business.

@trilliumbrewing until you publicly and transparently increase your hardworking and dedicated staff’s wages and stop obsessing about profits and “hype”, you’ve lost my business forever. You’re the same as AB-inBev. Profits are king for you. Such as shame…

— mbcotton (@mbcotton) November 21, 2018

Trillium was launched in 2013 by JC and Esther Tetreault, and has since become known for its creative products and collaborations with fellow brewers.

“We made a mistake,” Tetreault told the Boston Globe. “To have people not feel valued, that makes me feel terrible. . . . I’m pretty heartbroken as to how we got to this point.”

Trillium’s brewing processes are inspired by a farm-to-bottle mentality, experimenting with wild yeast and barrel ageing, and are also known for experimentation. One of its most recent launches, Pow Pow Double IPA, combined regular hops with Lupulin powder — a concentrated hop product made by flash freezing and then shattering intact hop flowers.

the drinks business has approached trillium for comment and will update the article when the brewer responds.