Lucky beer drinkers celebrate getting the first pints of Pliny the Younger at Russian River on the first day of release in 2013.

Russian River says the 10th annual release of Pliny the Younger will be Feb. 7.

“It will be available everyday (until we run out each day) for 14 days. Distribution begins the following week for local and no-so-local bar and restaurant accounts,” co-owner Natalie Cilurzo  posted on her blog on Monday. “Younger has not even been brewed yet so allocations will not be set until the final yield is determined in LATE JANUARY.”

Typically, they brew around 60 barrels, or slightly under 1,900 gallons, of the precious brew, Natalie has told me previously. No reason to expect it to be radically different for 2014, but the beer is so highly sought-after that even a few gallons one direction or the other can spell the difference between a bar getting a keg or being out of luck for the year. The county Economic Development Board has estimated that the two-week Pliny madness alone generates about $2.4 million for the county economy, both in direct sales and indirect effect of tourism and other related spending. That, by my calculation, means each pint is worth about $160 to Sonoma County generally.

In other news, Natalie says that the brewery raised more than $100,000 for Sutter Breast Care Center during October’s Breast Cancer events, an increase of about $25,000 over 2012.

– Sean Scully

 

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