I can't believe this is really happening!

Welp, things are starting to get real. If you read our old old thread about the nanobrewery my wife and I are opening (here), you'd know that it's something we're super serious about and now the kickstarter is live, we are totally blown away by the support people have for this stuff.

Again, not advertising (bragging maybe?) but we are just so stoked this is a thing that could happen. We just wanted to thank you all for the incredible wealth of knowledge everyone here has been so willing to share and the enormous outpouring of support we've been absolutely bowled over by. We couldn't have done it without you guys.

Cheers

Very awesome! Good luck to you.

I tried to click your kickstarter link, but it's a dud.

homebrewdad said:

Very awesome! Good luck to you.

I tried to click your kickstarter link, but it's a dud.

Click to expand...

Yea, sorry, that should be fixed now. HBT had inserted itself into the link which is probably an anti-spambot measure. I fixed it so now it should work.

Thanks for the support!:rockin:

How many barrels are you starting out with?
Picked a location yet? Seems like every week there's a brewery opening up in the north county, ok I guess everywhere else too tho.
Good luck btw, ill show up to the grand opening and support!

Just a thought, for your grand opening weekend, make some special grand opening glasses or growlers, and give them away or have the customer pay for them with the beers..and each time they come in with it, they get a dollar off...
Customers for life....
Igotsand

igotsand said:

How many barrels are you starting out with?
Picked a location yet? Seems like every week there's a brewery opening up in the north county, ok I guess everywhere else too tho.
Good luck btw, ill show up to the grand opening and support!

Just a thought, for your grand opening weekend, make some special grand opening glasses or growlers, and give them away or have the customer pay for them with the beers..and each time they come in with it, they get a dollar off...
Customers for life....
Igotsand

Click to expand...

Well, we've designed a really nice 3bbl system but we also have a line on a really cheap 1.5bbl turnkey brewery so we're looking at that and just doubling up on fermentor space to double-batch because of the cost. We'll have to see. As for location, we have some favorite spots and we'll get settled once the kickstarter is funded. We'll be in South County for sure though, probably Miramar or Sorrento.

We wanted to do that discount glasses/growlers thing for the Kickstarter but it's against their TOS- let me just say that if you bring in any kickstarter-only glassware to the tasting room, you can bet we won't be filling it at full price.

Sounds and looks great guys, best of luck during funding and beyond!

ArrowheadHops said:

Sounds and looks great guys, best of luck during funding and beyond!

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Many thanks! We'll try and keep HBT updated on our progress

so how difficult is this to do in CA, seems like it's a bit easier to get this started in CA than other places.

Congrats on your brewery and your KS project! One strong piece of advice, be sure you DO NOT offer any alcohol in your KS rewards (as noted in your $1000 pledge section, specifically" "and of course pairings with all of your Two Kids favorites").

Kickstarter will not allow the sale of alcohol, nor will the backend payment processor. You don't want to go through the whole process and then be denied all your funding due to one unfortunate sentence.

Seems silly, but trust me, it is something that can be a real concern.

Best of luck and hope this helps!

Hopper5000 said:

so how difficult is this to do in CA, seems like it's a bit easier to get this started in CA than other places.

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It's still very difficult. You see more in CA because there's already more of an established craft beer culture, especially in certain areas. One of the toughest things for us is specific to the City of San Diego- there are so many people trying to open breweries there is a real backlog of license applications which can push your licensure period to 90 days or more- all that time you need to be paying rent and utilities as well as upkeep on your equipment but you can't brew any beer for sale. That's killer.

The ABC and TTB licensing processes are labyrinthine anywhere you are. What does make it feasible is the fact that we can sell directly to our consumers. The tasting room model means that we can sell the 120 pints at retail ($4-$6 per pint) rather than selling the keg for $150 total to a bar or less to a distributor. If we do want to sell to bars, we can self-distribute and at least cut out one of the middlemen.

Anyway, it's a ton of work and not something you do if you want to be rich, or even comfortable, but at least you spend all your leisure time exhaustedly doing something you would be enjoying if you had slept the previous night.

That said, we can't wait!

Ah ok, well good luck and sell that beer!

Hopper5000 said:

Ah ok, well good luck and sell that beer!

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We're trying! The kickstarter has trailed off a bit so we have some work to do but we're going to be doing some meetups as often as we can to try and drum up interest.

Thanks!

Pledged!!:rockin:

I get paid on Friday. As soon as that happens I'm pledging. I'm hoping to do the same thing one day. I go out to SD a couple times a year, I'll have to visit when you open. Cheers! and good luck!

Goodluck! I'll be sure to pledge.

I'm nearing the end of my business planning for my own microbrewery. Planning a 7 BBL out in CT. Will have a kickstarter soon as well. Goodluck to us!

Wow, thanks guys! The outpouring of support has been amazing- thank you all for your pledges. We're already 25% of the way there! How cool is that? We're ahead of schedule, and 80% of projects that reach 20% of their goal succeed!

I don't see the kickstarter anywhere. Help?

Since you are paying rent on the location, could you have "customers" in to have a pint? Not buy a pint, but just have them over for a sneak peek at what is in store once you really open....

Seems like a good idea to me, I don't know all the legal mumbo, though.

But seriously -you are living my dream- good luck!

passedpawn said:

I don't see the kickstarter anywhere. Help?

Click to expand...

It's in my sig, but the long link is :

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/twokidsbrewing/two-kids-brewing-company

and the short link is

kck.st/Uum9Gr



Anyway, as for serving beer, I'm welcome to share my homebrew with anyone I please, somedude. We had seven beers at the launch party, some of which are final recipes that will be on tap at the brewery as either core beers or special releases/seasonals.

daksin said:

It's in my sig,

Click to expand...

Oops, I have sigs turned off.

passedpawn said:

Oops, I have sigs turned off.

Click to expand...

Presumably to prevent having to scroll over long obnoxious, outdated sigs like mine:cross:

I have to say that is supper cool! will you be selling bottles or just pints and growlers? i would assume distribution would be too difficult with that small a brewery. we really need something like this in missouri!

Initially all of our sales will be through the tasting room- samples, pints, and growlers with a few limited bottle releases also at the tasting room. We may have a few kegs in local craft beer bars but that will be more for advertising than anything else. Out of state distribution is so far in the future it's not even on our list of things to fantasize about yet. We'll be happy to be a small local nano for as long as we can stand it- if people love it so much it needs to travel, well, we'll see in a few years but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm in, as long as you reciprocate.


Planning phase for a very similar nano in the Central Valley. Wish you all the success my wife and I hope to have (or at least one heck of a ride).

Our target date is 01/01/14.

Good luck, and expect me to bug you when I run into snags.

snaps10 said:

I'm in, as long as you reciprocate.


Planning phase for a very similar nano in the Central Valley. Wish you all the success my wife and I hope to have (or at least one heck of a ride).

Our target date is 01/01/14.

Good luck, and expect me to bug you when I run into snags.

Click to expand...

Thanks! When would you like to launch your kickstarter?

We're going to try to pay for our brew house and fermenters by ourselves, as well as get into a building. We're looking at a few places now that would be perfect and hoping they stay available. We'll probably start our kickstarter in the fall. We've got our LLC and business license applied for. Luckily there are a couple micros around that are very eager to help us with advice. One even offered to come help me build my fermentation and cold rooms!

What are you using for a system? We're going to buy a 3.5bbl, with intentions if keeping it in our tap room to brew seasonal and small batch on after moving up to a big system.

snaps10 said:

We're going to try to pay for our brew house and fermenters by ourselves, as well as get into a building. We're looking at a few places now that would be perfect and hoping they stay available. We'll probably start our kickstarter in the fall. We've got our LLC and business license applied for. Luckily there are a couple micros around that are very eager to help us with advice. One even offered to come help me build my fermentation and cold rooms!

What are you using for a system? We're going to buy a 3.5bbl, with intentions if keeping it in our tap room to brew seasonal and small batch on after moving up to a big system.

Click to expand...

We would like to start on a 3bbl but have a line on a cheap 1.5bbl turnkey brewery. Once we move into a space it will be easier to tell what will work for us.

Extremely happy for you guys! As a fellow MiraMesan I'm looking forward to contributing to the cause

daksin said:

We would like to start on a 3bbl but have a line on a cheap 1.5bbl turnkey brewery. Once we move into a space it will be easier to tell what will work for us.

Click to expand...

Keep us updated. Support local brewers.

Matt_Valenzuela said:

Extremely happy for you guys! As a fellow MiraMesan I'm looking forward to contributing to the cause

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Wow, thanks! We should meet up for a pint!

Kick starter withdrew from my account! You're on your way!!!

Man, this could be just the thing to prove to bigger investors that the idea is solid. Congrats on reaching your goal and building your dream. Now I am hopeful that this will work in Oklahoma where we hardly have any breweries compared to the rest of the nation.

snaps10 said:

Kick starter withdrew from my account! You're on your way!!!

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Thank you so much for your contribution! Can't wait to send out rewards. We are so stoked.

As for convincing investors- not a chance. There are tons of operating nanobreweries and that already proves it's viable- tasting room laws and self-distribution make it profitable if you care not to draw a salary. The banks are interested in making money for themselves- not for your company.

They want to see bigger breweries with more chance of turning a profit run by people with experience in the industry. That's just good business sense. Don't expect anybody but your friends and family to start believing in you enough to give you money. We've got over 50 breweries and brewpubs in San Diego county- the pessimists on probrewer are partly right when they say "not every homebrewer can own their own brewery." They got to that conclusion in a different way, but that doesn't make them any less right.

We're content to be a small local provider of amazing craft beers that anyone can enjoy, and as long as we can work on converting BMC drinkers with tasty, sessionable beers, we can continue to appeal to the beer weirdos out there like myself with some interesting, obscure beers too. We'll see where this journey takes us and we couldn't be more excited.

Wow just stumbled across this thread - just wanted to say congrats. Wish I could've backed this even though I am on the other coast.

Good luck with everything!

Stigy said:

Wow just stumbled across this thread - just wanted to say congrats. Wish I could've backed this even though I am on the other coast.

Good luck with everything!

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Thanks so much! As for updates- we have a copy of a lease in our hands and are working through the legalese as we speak. We hope to have keys by the middle of the week, and then the REAL work begins!

Boom! Best kickstarter glass yet!!!!

Best of luck to you guys. Keep us updated as you go. (Especially me, as we spoke about before, I'm not too far behind you). Can't wait to one by the brewery for a pint...or six.



Ps. Yes, that glass held the full bomber of 99 Golden Ale.

Wow that is unbelievably cool! I have to say it's kind of weird seeing them in someone else's house, though. How's your thing coming?

We hit a little hiccup, well, not so much a hiccup as a change of plans. Initially we were planning for one to two investors but we decided to be 100% self funded. So we're taking some time and slowing down a bit. We just wanted it to be all us and not have to deal with investors or partners, especially if we weren't able to keep majority ownership.

I get that- dealing with other human beings can be infuriating. Way to go!

Hi Rob, I just ran into this post. I hope things are going really good (I wish I could have helped you both in Kckstarter and with my truck). Hope to be a loyal customer soon...