Thank you HBT...ECB is about to open!!!

Fellow Homebrewers...

Wanted to send a quick shout out to all of you that have supported my growth as a brewer over the last few years. I've read many of your posts and learned so much from this site. Thank you!

After many moons of planning and dreaming, we are all set to open Emerald City Beer Company out of the Old Rainier Brewery here in Seattle. We just received our Federal Permit on Monday and have beer fermenting away as we speak...should be pouring our flagship, Dottie's Seattle Lager, by the end of the month.

Dottie is an American Amber Lager made from Washington grown barley (2-Row, Munich, Vienna and Melanoidin) and Yakima Valley Hops (Liberty and Magnum) that was developed on my converted keg homebrew system.

If any of you are ever in town or a local, please stop by for a brew. Would love to talk the BrewTalk with you!!!

Also, if your planning to start your own brewery and have any questions about the process we went through, my email address is on our website, feel free to send them over. I probably don't know the answer to all of your questions and we may be slow to respond given how busy things are but I would love to share our experiences and help those looking to do the same thing we did.

Happy Brewing and Cheers!

Rick

Rick Hewitt
Founder / Brewmaster
Emerald City Beer Company

www.EmeraldCityBeer.com
DEMAND MORE FROM YOUR BEER!

That's fantastic. Living the dream. Here's to great beer out of your fementers and a long and prosperous business endeavor.

Congrats! How about some details on your set up? How many barrels are you set up for?

Congrats! I saw your writeup on one of the Seattle beer blogs awhile back, and was excited to hear that the smells or boiling wort will once again fill the old Rainier brewery. Cool to hear you are on HBT. Very excited to see your beers once they start hitting the local beer bars. Are you all planning on selling growlers / filling cornies? If I remember right, you guys will be trying to fill the lager niche in the local market?

Very cool, I see that lovely red building everyday while riding the link rail to the airport for work. I will definitely have to check it out, good luck!!!

LOL, nice logo BTW :rockin:

If ever I get the chance to visit I will definatly look you up. May be a bit tough as it is a long walk from OZ

Congrats! I'm doing the same thing myself (well maybe; probably on a smaller scale), so I'll be sure to bug you if I have any questions.

AWESOME! consider some of your product sold!

robtotten said:

Congrats! How about some details on your set up? How many barrels are you set up for?

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We are starting off super scrappy. I'm 28 and wasn't able to raise enough capital to build out our own large scale system right off the bat, so for the time being we will continue to do all the development on my converted keg system. I had a guy weld an old keg in between another keg so that I could effectively yield 15 gallon batches and have plenty of room for head space during the boil. This way we can double brew in a day and fill our 1BBL fermentors. We do all of this at the Old Rainier Building.

Once we get the beer where we want it, we head to our contract brewer's location and crank out the big scale production. They have a 15bbl system with 30bbl fermentors. There is something wonderful about brewing 60 kegs in a day that makes you feel like you truly did something good for the world when you go to bed at night. haha

Our setup at the Old Rainier includes a tasting room and retail shop (we call it the Beer Lab), the idea being that the customers can come in and watch us brew (say during Monday Night Football) all while tasting the other brews we are developing and providing us feedback (sort of like Sam at Dogfish did back when he started at 27).

We wanted to give customers the ability to interact with us during the brewing process, show them that if they can make bread they can brew beer and that it's not an unapproachable hobby. Our hope is that this will help us convert more people to craft beer (since craft beer is only 7% of all the beer sold in the US).

Thanks for the kind words all, looking forward to pouring you a beer or three...

Cheers.

Rick

Sigafoos said:

Congrats! I'm doing the same thing myself (well maybe; probably on a smaller scale), so I'll be sure to bug you if I have any questions.

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I doubt you'll be on a smaller scale, we have a 0.5BBL brewhouse making us one of the smallest production breweries in the US. Thank goodness we found a contract brewer willing to work with us until we can afford our own large scale system.

Look into Brooklyn Brewing, they have book called Beer School that's fantastic. They started this same way, with 100% of the beer contracted out to FX Matt Brewing in Upstate New York. To this day, over 80% of Brooklyn Brewing beers are contracted out, until recently so was Sam Adams.

To me it's like cooking at your buddy's house. If you can make your ribs on your buddy's grill, why can't a brewer brew there beer on someone else gear. Maybe it's just me but some people seem to hate on contract brewing and I don't get it, gear is expensive and it's not like the beer knows who the owner is.

"It's not about the size of your brewery, it's about the quality of the beer in the glass."

Cheers.

Rick

wonderbread23 said:

Very excited to see your beers once they start hitting the local beer bars. Are you all planning on selling growlers / filling cornies? If I remember right, you guys will be trying to fill the lager niche in the local market?

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We are really excited to be on tap soon as well, you'd be a huge help if you could tell your favorite bars that they have get Dottie's Seattle Lager on tap from the new Emerald City Beer Company. We are trying to get the word out.

Yep, growlers and corny fills will be available about a month or so after our first pour event.

Cheers.

Rick

Yeah, I think people are finally getting over their anti-contract bias. .5bbl, damn. We were considering doing a 10G Sabco setup until we realized there is no damn way we want to brew that much for so little volume (our current plan is 1bbl).

Grr... you're making me want to head to Amazon now and get Beer School and Brewing Up A Business. SWMBO would not like that.

Congrats!! Keep us posted on progress and maybe some pics? :fro:

Congrats, I just "liked" your facebook page.

Revvy said:

Congrats, I just "liked" your facebook page.

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Thanks Revvy...your definitely one of the guys I've learned a lot from over the years...let me know if your ever in town, I owe you a tour and tasting

Padstack31 said:

Thanks Revvy...your definitely one of the guys I've learned a lot from over the years...let me know if your ever in town, I owe you a tour and tasting

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Awesome!!!!!! You're in one of my favorite parts of the planet, so you just may see me one of these days.

Revvy said:

You're in one of my favorite parts of the planet

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You mean "a brewery"?

Walker said:

You mean "a brewery"?

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LOL, a Brewery IN Seattle then.

Congrats, that is awesome man!

Terry08 said:

If ever I get the chance to visit I will definatly look you up. May be a bit tough as it is a long walk from OZ

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Oz is in Emerald City, isn't it?:cross: