A very Binjai Diwali

Cleaning up my room, I found many stuff from my time running Binjai Brew and it made me reminisce those days. The funny thing is that it is only my second Diwali since closing down, and the items I keep from those days has decreased tremendously - it only occupies a single shelf now. I imagine there might come a time where I no longer have a Binjai Brew memento and I figured I ought to capture my memories in a blog post.

Artifact 1 : The submission that started it all
This was our submission for the very first beer competition we joined - Pliney the Elder, a double IPA and a copy of Russian River's Pliny the Elder. We submitted a double IPA because we only found out about the competition on deadline day, and the double IPA was the only category that that needed a submission. Our classmate volunteered to help us design our submission - no surprise that she is now a successful designer - and thankfully, we made a beer that matched her design skills and won the competition. Artifact 2 : Cabinet door lock
We needed a way to "chope" a cabinet in our school lab and so we laser cut our very own cabinet door lock. Artifact 3 : CAN IS CAN
We had launched and rebranded as a legal entity but we soon realised that being the first craft brewery to launch in cans came with its challenges. A premium was associated with bottles and this meant that we were rejected from a lot of bottle shops because of our form factor. We decided to launch a campaign to push cans as a suitable way to enjoy craft beer. Artifact 4 : Embroidered patches
We just landed our first big event - Sentosa Grillfest - and we wanted to give away merchandise to loyal customers during the event. Rahul, my co-founder, decided to spend lavishly on embroidered patches. His reason - embroidery means permanence and Binjai Brew is here to stay. Artifact 5 : 2nd anniversary
Our second anniversary, was in December 2020 - the world was facing Covid - and for a brief period, Singapore opened up. Our fans came down in full support and we filled up the restaurant. Rahul and I signed off on two event menus. We kept one each.