Reinvention Brewing brews up the perfect pairings in Girl Scout cookie event
Manchester brewery will host its annual Girl Scout cookie-beer pairing event on Friday, March 7, Saturday, March 8, and Sunday, March 9.
Note: This article is made possible through a sponsored partnership between Reinvention Brewing and the Cleveland Prost.
It was probably a pretty good sign in 2004, when after their first date, George Aldrich took his future wife Kristy to the Home Depot to pick up parts for his homebrewing system. At that point, it was probably a safe assumption that their shared future would involve beer in some form or another.
“I should’ve run,” Kristy offered with a huge laugh.
Fast forward 21 years and beer and family sit at the center of their lives and they’re often intertwined. Just look at the event that has become the Reinvention Brewing’s signature social gathering — its annual Girl Scout cookies and beer pairing event.
One of the Aldriches’ daughter was heavily involved in Girl Scouts. So when cookie season rolled around, they thought an event pairing George’s beers and some of the iconic cookies from the scouts might be an opportune way to benefit everyone. They could help their oldest daughter Amelia sell some cookies and they could pack a crowd into the brewery on what otherwise would probably be a pretty quiet late winter Saturday.
It started off innocent enough — an afternoon of cookies and beer flights with lines forming out the door as soon as they opened and has morphed into one of the brewery’s busiest weekends of the year. This year’s ticketed event, which is in its eighth edition, spans three days and runs from Friday, March 7 to Sunday, March 9. Tickets, which are $18 for a three-beer, three-cookie flight (two of each cookie), are currently on sale and available here.
Photo: A colorful flight of beers paired with so many potential cookies at a past pairing event at Reinvention.
So what makes Reinvention’s Girl Scout cookie pairing event stand out and what makes it special? According to George and Kristy, it’s all about the research. The couple often spend hours every year coming up with the perfect pairings. I’ve attended other events like this that don’t exhibit nearly a fraction of the creativity and care. Oh, here’s a rich and chocolate-forward cookie, let’s pair it with some sort of stout. That’s typically how the thought process evolves.
But George and Kristy put in the work, which often leads to unexpected duos. The prep work is often the most taxing and the most fun part of the process. The Aldriches sit down with a box of each type of cookie and then go about pouring samples of George’s beers. They test out every combo before deciding on the final lineup. They just don’t default to past pairings. George didn’t wanna reveal the final pairings, but did promise some unique and unexpected partnerships.
2017 story: Reinvention Brewing taps into engineer’s future
“That’s why I love this event, because I love to be able to find these unique combinations and share them with people,” George said.
“The whole idea of is that you might have someone try a beer they might not necessarily go for, because they’re interested in what the combination might taste like,” Kristy added.
The Aldriches drew inspiration for the pairing event from another brewery doing the same thing. An extended family noted seeing a similar event in the Pittsburgh area. And with a kid in Girl Scouts, George and Kristy thought they could not only replicate that idea but also do it better.
It started as a walk-in event, where people could enter without tickets and hang for as long as they wanted. But as the popularity of the event exploded, they needed to adjust. They ultimately expanded it to an entire weekend.
Photo: The mini-muffin tray contains a three-beer flight with the selected cookies at Reinvention. I am hungry and thirsty just looking at this one.
“We helped our daughter’s troop sell a ton of cookies, and it helps to have a connection with a supplier,” Kristy offered. “We were buying over a hundred boxes of cookies to run the event originally.
“It was great, but it was also hectic.”
COVID limited seating capacity at all establishments. And that’s when they rolled out tickets to create a more relaxed feel and atmosphere.
Roots of Reinvention
As noted earlier, George is the right kind of nerd to make excellent beer. He’s extremely process-oriented and constantly tweaking his recipes to inch closer and closer to perfection. He honed those skills during 15 years as a homebrewer and over the last eight years at Reinvention. (Wild to think the brewery will celebrate its eighth anniversary in May. As a parent, time no longer feels real because it both absolutely drags and flies all at once.)
George spent more than 20 years as an engineer before making the leap into full-time brewing. But it’s that leap that is so perfectly encapsulated in the identity of Reinvention — with a friendly nudge from a spouse and unwavering support from family, you can’t be afraid to try something new. Or in this case, you can’t be afraid to completely upend your life and choose to pursue a passion project as a career. But thankfully, the community has really embraced Reinvention.
Photo: You get the drill — three cookies paired with three beers at a recent Reinvention pairing event.
I’ve experienced something similar and moved onto new things with the support and kick-start from my incredible wife. I first experienced this when I was considering leaving journalism. And then again right after I made the leap into a new career and was sorting out if it would be possible to continue the beer writing I had grown to love during the second half of my career at the D&C. So while it was scary at first, it proved to be the best thing I ever did (at least professionally — it’s wild to think it will be three years post-journalism for me next week and three years for the newsletter in April). It really does take a team to make these things work.
And the Aldriches demonstrate how daring to dream and pushing forward out of your comfort zone can spark something new and exciting. After living in Utica for a decade and missing the community aspect of the Finger Lakes, the Aldriches moved back to Ontario County and started planning for a brewery.
“We wanted to turn the hobby into a business and a career,” George said, “so that I could focus on something other than working for corporate overlords.” (At this point in the interview, I let out a hearty chuckle, knowing that George is a huge Star Wars nerd and the “overlord” term sounded like something straight out of the Empire. He even releases a Galactic Empire imperial Pilsner every year to celebrate the May the Fourth.)
“The Finger Lakes were home for us,” Kristy added. “And at that time, they were really booming with new breweries opening.”
The Manchester location proved to be the perfect canvas to build upon that dream. It formerly housed an ice cream shop (and Reinvention even used the ice cream window for to-go sales during the pandemic).
(One of my all-time favorite things to do as a beer writer is to read my previous coverage from the D&C and see how these breweries have evolved. It’s pretty cool to see how true a brewery remained to its original mission or how it was successfully able to pivot after the pandemic pause.)
The Aldriches purchased the Manchester property in December 2016 and were open by the following May, which is, in my experience, a pretty unprecedented turnaround for opening a brewery.
George spent the first four years of the brewery working full time as an engineer. He would often brew on Sundays to meet brewery demand. Kristy put her teaching career on hold as she cared for the couple’s two daughters and ran the brewery tasting room. And then as the pandemic hit, the roles were reversed. George decided to devote all of his time and energy to brewing, while Kristy returned to the classroom.
Kristy pushed George to take that leap. “For this guy who normally plays it safe, it's a huge leap,” Kristy told me in 2017. She continued, “The only thing we could ever regret is not trying something new.”
If you go…
Tickets are currently available through the Reinvention Brewing website and can be accessed on the page’s events tab. Sessions are available in one-hour increments and run throughout the day. But don’t hesitate, because the event is sure to sell out and the most desirable windows will book first.
Again, the event runs on Friday, March 7, Saturday, March 8, and Sunday, March 9, at Reinvention Brewing, 9 N. Main St. in Manchester, Ontario County. The brewery is located just off Exit 43 on the NYS Thruway.