A familiar Modesto business is now creating craft beer. ‘No better time than now’
The Modesto company already known for capturing sunshine in a bottle is now also going to offer suds in a can.
Sciabica Family California Olive Oil, the Modesto-based olive oil maker, has started brewing craft beer out of its Yosemite Boulevard headquarters. Company CEO Jonathan Sciabica, the great-grandson of the business’s founder, is launching a craft brewery with plans to sell directly to customers later this year.
Sciabica’s interest in beer came from his love of craft brews, and he had been thinking about possibly starting a brewery for the past five years. But then the pandemic hit, and it accelerated their plans out of necessity.
Like many others, the company had a slowdown in early 2020, and as a way to keep employees and stay busy, Sciabica decided it was time to make his dream a reality. The result is Track 424 Brewery, a craft microbrewery run out of Sciabica’s that will start offering tasting, and later canned beer sales, from its existing olive oil tasting room.
“I figured, there’s no better time than now to start something new,” Sciabica said. “That was the precipice of a pie-in-the-sky idea becoming reality and of jumping in with both feet to create a brewery.”
Modesto company focuses on quality over quantity with brewery
As you might guess from the 85-year-old small batch, artisan olive oil company that has won multiple awards, Sciabica and his team have been exacting in their pursuit of precisely the flavors they want to develop in their beer. So much so, that for the past year and a half they’ve only truly brewed one style of beer.
The beer, a hazy tropical IPA they’re calling On the Bright Track, will also be their first official release. But you’re going to have to wait about a month to taste it, when it debuts at the company’s popular annual Farm 2 Fork anniversary case sale and vendors market Aug. 26.
All that testing and tweaking has paid off, because their hazy IPA has a refreshing creamy and clean taste, with tropical fruit notes and a crisp finish.
Sciabica and his small team, which includes two of his nephews, Andrew and Nicholas Sciabica, and Sciabica’s employee Craig Hilliker, have been doing research and development on a tiny half-barrel system, the size typically used by home brewers. They’ve taken over an unused boiler room at the warehouse, which still bears the A&W logo of the building’s past as a syrup manufacturer for the root beer brand.
But in early August they will upgrade to a commercial 3.5-barrel system. The new system will allow them to brew about 100 gallons at a time, which they plan to can for sale. The anniversary event will also be the start of on-site beer tastings in their existing olive oil tasting room.
Sciabica plans to create new joint olive oil, beer tasting room
At that time they’ll start taking reservations for beer sales, which will be sold in four-packs of 15-ounce tall cans. Once they get rolling, Sciabica said, they anticipate doing new beer drops every Friday. People can reserve cans to start, and they also are considering a subscription service.
They’ll focus on the hazy IPA at first, but then likely will add a blonde ale and a more traditional IPA by the early part of next year. Sciabica has a detailed three-year plan to expand the brewery. And while they hope to grow, he said they aren’t planning on expanding beyond largely local distribution. Instead they’re focused on quality and consistency over quantity with their beers.
By the holidays they want to create a dedicated combined taproom and olive oil tasting room. They plan to renovate an existing conference room that is attached to the current gift shop into their new tap/tasting room. Once that is open, they’ll be able to start selling pints there instead of just offering tastings and also start bringing in regular food trucks as well.
Then sometime next year they want to open up the tap/tasting room on its Yosemite side with garage doors, and create an outside patio area. Sciabica also has a longer-term dream of bringing an old train caboose onto the patio area to create a second tasting area.
New Modesto craft beer company named after rail spur marker
If you’re sensing a train theme, you’re right. The brewery is named after the rail spur sign that denotes where trains can come off the main track onto Sciabica’s rail spurs. The simple red sign is emblazoned with 424, sort of like an address marker for trains.
The company’s logo is the front of a locomotive, and they plan to keep the theme going in their various beer names as well. Both the new craft beer venture and their olive oil business will operate under their family parent company, Nick Sciabica & Sons.
As they make the jump to become a commercial craft brewery, Sciabica and his staff also have brought on a full-time brewmaster, Bob Proffitt, who has worked for Samuel Adams in the past.
While it might seem an unusual pairing for the 85-year-old company, which is the oldest running olive oil producer in California, Sciabica said many of the same principles apply between making premium olive oil and craft beer.
“From a sensory perspective switching (from olive oil to beer) was very natural,” Sciabica said. “Where it really parallels the business is that with the olive oil we work backwards from flavor. We know what we want the olive oil to taste like, and work to craft that certain flavor. And we’re doing that with the beer, too.”
Combining the two will be another way to bring people into their Yosemite Boulevard site. Sciabica said they average anywhere from 10 visitors on a slow day to more than 100 during the holidays. But by pairing beer and olive oil tastings they hope to bring in new customers. Some might come for the beer, and stay for the olive oil and vice versa.
In the end, Sciabica hopes this venture will be an exciting new direction for his multi-generational family business, and be embraced by the community like the company’s olive oil has been for decades.
“I love olive oil and love what I do,” he said, “But it’s been fun to do a project that’s all my own.”
This story was originally published July 25, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
