BentBrewer
Well-Known Member
Dear Beer Nuts,
In the spirit of Muddy Creek and Gilded Goat, I'm breaking cover and letting you all in on the effort and bother of trying to make a living brewing good beer. Their threads are how I ended up here after all.
So three years ago, (Note that: three years!) my buddy Mike started looking into brewpubs. He felt that the profit margin could be good if things were run well. We started by looking at setups like the local brewpub in our area. (A nod here to hard working Steve and Rochelle at Cool Beerwerks) After a bit of research on Mike's part he decided the sweet spot was a 10~15 barrel system. Smaller and you're either up against a growth phase immediately, or you're not managing to keep your local taps happy. So we started looking for space.
Did you know there are a lot of land/building owners out there that have a complete disconnection from reality? We do now.
I honestly don't remember how many places we looked at. Ceilings too low, no parking, owned by the railroad, (there's a whole story in itself!) major decon to put industrial in, not enough water, not enough gas, not enough etc.
We finally had to start looking farther afield than we originally intended, and found a great building in Lincoln, CA. I'm told Kneedeep was going to take it 5 years ago, but they found a building with floor drains already installed and went with that. (Their current location)
In the meantime, we'd found the brewdeck we liked, after having my fears about Radical New Technology quelled by visiting Coachella Valley Brewing and seeing their brewdeck in operation and tasting every one of their beers to make sure they weren't slipping something by us.
If you can get your hands on a bottle, I can highly recommend their Black Widow. It's sweet, but it's darned good.
So, here we are. Half the tanks came in last Friday, and the other half come in on Wednesday. Brewdeck comes at the end of November. Mike is still getting shocked at the costs for install, and the tasting room. (I told him it'd be 3X whatever he allotted!
)
Who wants to know what?
In the spirit of Muddy Creek and Gilded Goat, I'm breaking cover and letting you all in on the effort and bother of trying to make a living brewing good beer. Their threads are how I ended up here after all.
So three years ago, (Note that: three years!) my buddy Mike started looking into brewpubs. He felt that the profit margin could be good if things were run well. We started by looking at setups like the local brewpub in our area. (A nod here to hard working Steve and Rochelle at Cool Beerwerks) After a bit of research on Mike's part he decided the sweet spot was a 10~15 barrel system. Smaller and you're either up against a growth phase immediately, or you're not managing to keep your local taps happy. So we started looking for space.
Did you know there are a lot of land/building owners out there that have a complete disconnection from reality? We do now.
We finally had to start looking farther afield than we originally intended, and found a great building in Lincoln, CA. I'm told Kneedeep was going to take it 5 years ago, but they found a building with floor drains already installed and went with that. (Their current location)
In the meantime, we'd found the brewdeck we liked, after having my fears about Radical New Technology quelled by visiting Coachella Valley Brewing and seeing their brewdeck in operation and tasting every one of their beers to make sure they weren't slipping something by us.
If you can get your hands on a bottle, I can highly recommend their Black Widow. It's sweet, but it's darned good. So, here we are. Half the tanks came in last Friday, and the other half come in on Wednesday. Brewdeck comes at the end of November. Mike is still getting shocked at the costs for install, and the tasting room. (I told him it'd be 3X whatever he allotted!
)Who wants to know what?
