Beer And Cider Are Fueling Benny Boy Brewing’s Success In Los Angeles

A fresh pint poured from the tank at Benny Boy Brewing in Los Angeles.

At first glance, nothing about Benny Boy Brewing makes sense. Nestled next to the eternally crowded Interstate 5, just a stone's throw from a large railyard, in the sea of concrete that is Los Angeles, one must wonder why this one-year-old establishment is always crowded with drinkers. But, in a city that often celebrates the surreal, Benny Boy's willingness to go against the grain is the exact reason for its success.

As the first combined brewery and cidery in Los Angeles, the 10,000-square-foot establishment serves as a beverage incubator for the co-owners, husband and wife duo Ben Farber and Chelsey Rosetter. Using Old World methods married to modern-day equipment, the two can draw on the over a decade of research they put in across Europe, perfecting their techniques. Their time spent across the pond is evident when you step foot into their contemporary tasting room lined with gleaming tanks leading to a large outdoor patio.

"We both have spent a lot of time in Belgium. I apprenticed at a brewery learning my craft, and we both extensively toured the country. That gave us the vision for what we wanted to open and how to stand out in the heavily competitive US beer market," says Farber. "Los Angeles is a heavy-centered IPA market, and we wanted not to go down that rabbit hole. Instead, we deliver classic European styles with some California twists in the relaxed beer garden environment we fell in love with Belgium."

Ben Farber and Chelsey Rosetter, the co-owners of Benny Boy Brewing in Los Angeles.

Residing in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood, once the center of the brewing industry in LA, the facility sits just a few blocks from the Brewery Artist Loft, itself an old Pabst facility. The old smokestack from the brewery can be seen from their outdoor beer garden. The location is not an accident. The couple fell in love with the neighborhood years ago and realized that its location only minutes from downtown LA would make it the perfect 'Urban Oasis.' Housed inside a former 100-year-old roofing company, the couple designed and oversaw the entire remodel.

By offering craft beer and cider, each produced on-site, Benny Boy Brewing hedged its bets by not placing all its eggs into one basket. Their hunch that their cider would bring in more drinkers was good. When they opened in March of 2022, their pour mix was 75% beer and 25% cider; after one year, that had shifted considerably to 60% beer and 40% cider. Most importantly, neither seems to be eating into the other. Instead, they both are growing.

"I feel like craft cider is where craft beer was twenty years ago, and we are at the forefront of it in the LA market. Drinkers are just starting to be introduced to the subtleties of the classic European ciders after years of terrible big commercial ciders. Every day we have people inside our tasting room become cider converts after tasting how good they can be," says Rosetter. "The more drinkers we introduce and educate to the beauty of ciders, the better our business becomes. By offering both under one roof, we can offer a much more inclusive hang-out spot that's not just beer enthusiasts but drinkers that don't like beer that we might have lost to a wine bar."

The spacious outdoor beer garden at the heart of Benny Boy Brewing in Los Angeles.

Benny Boy Brewing has gotten their ciders on tap into several high-end restaurants and other establishments in the LA market. The competition for tap handles of beer is fierce, but by finding a white space to exploit, Benny Boy has made inroads by offering something new and different. Made with apples from 5 Mile Orchard, their ciders have sediments and closely resemble the classic English and French ciders the couple researched in Europe. By using high-pressure tanks to carbonate them naturally, a trick they learned from a small rural French producer, they have brought a technology rarely seen implemented to market.

That focus on doing things differently also is evident on the brewing side. Using only full-flower hops and naturally carbonating their beers slowly in tanks, they sacrifice speed for flavor. Their most interesting innovation is their high-pressure floor-to-ceiling tanks that line the back of the tasting room. Inspired by something they saw in London, the custom-made Canadian tanks allow their beers to be poured directly from the tank to the glass for the freshest beer possible.

All their efforts to swim upstream have been paying dividends, as Benny Boy Brewing's sales numbers only keep growing. Operating primarily on word-of-mouth, their reputation as an innovator and exciting spot to visit is quickly spreading beyond their neighborhood, LA's oldest suburb. They recently began bottling their beers and ciders for sale on-site and plan to keep growing and defying expectations.