There are more than 130 operating breweries in San Diego County…and Overtime Brew isn’t one of them. But it aims to work with as many of them as possible. Also going by the name Overtime Biz & Brews, the project is the dynamic brainchild of business professionals who ramped up a one-off holiday brewing project, and turned it into something bigger, a driver for networking based around local beer.
It all started in 2013 when seven employees of marketing and digital-design firm Ninthlink had the idea to homebrew several beers and dress them up with branded 22-ounce bottles to hand out as gifts for clients and serve at their annual holiday-party. This initiative went well, enough that the group contemplated opening their own brewery, but that idea was soon shelved. It wasn’t until the group was in need of a new base of operations that they got anywhere near professional brewing equipment. That unexpected happening occurred when they began subletting office-space from Grantville’s Benchmark Brewing Company.
As a thank-you to Benchmark’s owners for leasing them the space, the group floated the notion of “collaboration beer” they would brew with their new landlords, then market under at a special event called The IM (internet marketing) Brew Party. They proceeded, producing KP IPA this June. As they marketed the event around that beer and interest grew, they decided to dust off the Overtime moniker and use it to further brand the entire operation and frame this brewery-firm collaborative concept. The event went well, but even before it took place, the Ninthlink team started receiving inquiries from other breweries interested in collaborating.
Miramar’s Mikkeller Brewing San Diego worked with Overtime to brew #Overtime IPA (also known as Hasthag IPA), and a tag-team beer is currently in the works with Kearny Mesa’s Council Brewing Company. In all cases, both parties agree upon a style to brew, including target-ABV (alcohol-by-volume), grain and hop profiles. From there, the entire Overtime crew participates in the labor of the brew-day, then sets to work marketing, using the beer as the focal point of events that draw business professionals together primarily for networking purposes, though the plan is to branch out and make the events more communal in nature.
Says Overtime’s Jeremy Stallings, “In this age of social networking, there is nothing social about social networking, so, yeah, we are bringing face-to-face experiences with ‘no trolls’ to put the social back in social networking…with beer. Enjoying beer, learning about business, exchanging values, broadening networks and doing great things in the community—that is what we are all about.”
