Yet another group of hombrewers trying to go pro

[remilard]

Assumption of Risk is an awesome name idea for a high alcohol beer. We were trying to think of a few legal phrases we could throw into the beer names without making them inaccessible to non-legal drinkers.

I vote for an IPA called Ipso Facto Ale.

 

[justinm]

Actually this is because the brewers have a better lobby, just not the kind of brewer you are.

That is probably true. I wasn't thinking about the BMC lobby.

 

[justinm]

heywolfie1015

There's always Attractive Nuisance. And the Saucy Intruder.

Here is a quick and dirty draft we came up with for the saucy intruder. We have a friend from undergrad who is an artist who will probably do the actual artwork for us, so we are just brainstorming ideas for now.

We were going to call it Hop Shortage until we realized that Terrapin already had that name. I think every name with the word Hop in it may have already been taken.

 

[heywolfie1015]

Ha! Love it.

 

[Brocster]

Subscribed!

 

[justinm]

I thought I would update the thread after a long hiatus. We are still looking to open up our brewery, probably beginning construction in the fall of 2011 and opening in spring 2012. For us, crowd funding did not work because most people we talked to would rather put up larger amounts of money for equity shares instead of small amounts for perks, so that is what we ended up doing. The longest amount of time was spent working and reworking the business plan, but we finally got it compete. We reduced our brew house from 30 barrels to a 7 barrels doing double batches into 4 15 barrel fermenters and were able to reduce our start-up costs from 500k to 285k (with only 35 coming from debt financing.) That left us with 4 7 bbls which we could devote to specialty brews. Once we meet our investment goals, we hope to move quickly to make this a reality. If anyone is in the starting stages of the business plan and has any questions, send me a pm and we would glad to be of assistance.

We also will be updating our website more frequently now that we have everything in order. http://www.blackacrebrewing.com

 

[Yooper]

I thought I would update the thread after a long hiatus. We are still looking to open up our brewery, probably beginning construction in the fall of 2011 and opening in spring 2012. For us, crowd funding did not work because most people we talked to would rather put up larger amounts of money for equity shares instead of small amounts for perks, so that is what we ended up doing. The longest amount of time was spent working and reworking the business plan, but we finally got it compete. We reduced our brew house from 30 barrels to a 7 barrels doing double batches into 4 15 barrel fermenters and were able to reduce our start-up costs from 500k to 285k (with only 35 coming from debt financing.) That left us with 4 7 bbls which we could devote to specialty brews. However, we were lucky to have unique factors such as getting free rent for 18 months and a really cheap purchase price after that. Once we meet our investment goals, we hope to move quickly to make this a reality. If anyone is in the starting stages of the business plan and has any questions, send me a pm and we would glad to be of assistance.

We also will be updating our website more frequently now that we have everything in order. http://www.blackacrebrewing.com

When you need a temporary worker to sweep up and clean mashtuns, payment in beer- let me know! Bob and I are available and are planning on visiting all my HBT "imaginary friends" to work at their breweries.

 

[humann_brewing]

wow, your IIPA says it has over 1/2oz / pint that works out to over 4oz per gallon or say 20oz in a 5 gallon batch. Very nice

 

[beach31684]

Justin, I am also from Indianapolis!

I am so happy to have stumbled onto this thread. I have lots of questions to ask you. A group of my friends are dabbling with the idea of starting a brewery. But we are still in the infancy stage (more like conception stage). The idea just came up over the weekend and we have hit the ground running with a hand full of scissors! I would love a chance to chat with you. So many questions!

Send me a pm when you get the chance.

 

[gicts]

I'm only 2 hours away. Way to live the dream!

 

[integrator]

I'm in Indy. Let me know if you if you guys need a hand with anything. I'll work for beer I've just gotten hooked on home brewing and would love to give you guys some help. I'm an automation engineer if you need a hand with bottling/can equip.

 

[integrator]

and where are you setting up shop?

 

[justinm]

and where are you setting up shop?

Thanks for all the well wishes. Once we start construction, I am sure we will take all the help we can get from people around Indy and the interwebs at large. We've always envisioned this undertaking as a community project and we would love everyone to be involved. We'll provide the beer:

 

[thomrenault]

Black Acre is a very clever name for your brewery too.

Yes it really is. Unfortunately us lawyers are all creative in the same way.... I was going to name my homebrew operations Blackacre Brewery, now I might have to worry about trademark. Can you trademark Blackacre though, since I thought that when O died it went to A for life and then to B and his heirs. Are you one of B's heirs?

 

[rsklhm10]

Yes it really is. Unfortunately us lawyers are all creative in the same way.... I was going to name my homebrew operations Blackacre Brewery, now I might have to worry about trademark. Can you trademark Blackacre though, since I thought that when O died it went to A for life and then to B and his heirs. Are you one of B's heirs?

No it was: O to A, but if Blackacre is not used as a brewery then to B. Blackacre brings back old memories from Property law.... On a side note, if I ever get a chance to open a brewery/brewpub I am naming it after the road my law school was on, because everyday I turned on it I wanted a beer.

 

[justinm]

We hadn't updated this for a while so thought I would post some updates. Our 3 BBL nanobrewery and taproom will be opening in the fall and we take possession of our location in July. We are focusing primarily on in house pint and growler sales with limited distribution.

After looking at a lot of potential locations we finally settled on a 2200 square foot location in a high traffic retail area in a historic neighborhood, with the blessing of low Indiana rent. This space gives us plenty of room for expansion to a 7 to 10 BBL system if needed and can hold enough people in the tap room to allow the endeavor to be profitable. If everything goes according to plan we should be able to release are location sometime this week.

This is our system as of today:

3 BBL Electric Brewing system (provided by Stout Tanks)
10 3 BBL Plastic Conicals (in a temp controlled fermentation room)
11 4 BBL Serving Tanks (located in a 18x8 cold room)
Small run bottling for special release beers with blichman beer guns.

We will continue to update information as it comes in on our facebook page and website.

 

[integrator]

Great to hear Justin!
Give us that location, given, there are only so many historic neighborhoods around here!

 

[primer]

as a fellow justinM, i wish you the best of luck. ill watch your progress as this is something id love to dive into one day as well!

 

[justinm]

Great to hear Justin!
Give us that location, given, there are only so many historic neighborhoods around here!

Although our location is nailed down, we just have to wait for a few more formalities to be cleared up before we can announce our location. On our website front page there is currently an Ominous Countdown. Who knows, maybe when that finishes, some new info will come to light. Or, maybe we just like countdowns...

 

[IrregularPulse]

Cool, maybe I'll get to stop over sometime. Only 3 hours away for me.

 

[rfavors]

Although our location is nailed down, we just have to wait for a few more formalities to be cleared up before we can announce our location. On our website front page there is currently an Ominous Countdown. Who knows, maybe when that finishes, some new info will come to light. Or, maybe we just like countdowns...

Cool. I too live and work in Indy area. I would love to check out the brewery as you get started. I would also be willing to help out for the knowledge and exposure (and perhaps a brew).

Best of Luck, and I can't wait to try your brews!

-Ryan

 

[peecan52]

I am in Indy in the Irvington area. I would love to help out if anything is needed. The more craft brews around here the better.

 

[Old_E]

I'm so jealous. I would rather be doing almost anything than practicing law, but alas..... Good luck to y'all.

How much funding came through investin? Did you feel like that was helpful?

 

[laiced]

Everything looks awesome here! Congrats on making this a reality!

I was looking through your swag and something struck me as curious....you have no pint glass swag, just the stein. Is this due to the supplier not having regular glasses or is just profit margin too low to justify?

 

[justinm]

Cool. I too live and work in Indy area. I would love to check out the brewery as you get started. I would also be willing to help out for the knowledge and exposure (and perhaps a brew).

Once we get a little closer to open we will definitely be drafting volunteers that we will bribe with beer, special access, etc.

I was looking through your swag and something struck me as curious....you have no pint glass swag, just the stein. Is this due to the supplier not having regular glasses or is just profit margin too low to justify?

The stuff on the site right now is just through cafe press. We a getting branded willie becher glasses for our main glass at the tap room but haven't yet purchased them (large minimum order). Once we make our large glasses order, we will throw extras of everything on the site for sale. They will be much cheaper as well, in the 2-4 dollar range. Same goes for clothing, but right now we just can't justify sitting around with boxes of shirts in our laundry room, so one at a time printing is convenient (but pricey). Everything on the site currently, we take no profit from. It is just for word of mouth purposes.

I am in Indy in the Irvington area. I would love to help out if anything is needed. The more craft brews around here the better.

We love Irvington. I live in Holy Cross right now, just west of there.

How much funding came through investin? Did you feel like that was helpful?

We ended up not meeting our goal through invest.in by no fault of the website. A lot of people we talked to were more interested in putting a little more money into the endeavor for an equity share then just getting little rewards. The crowd surfing model is tough if you are not constantly having public tasting to get people involved or are super into social media. No one really wants to throw down money for a beer they have never tried. Unlike creative projects such as a film or cd, you are also severely limited by geography. People in Baltimore could care less about a nano opening in Indianapolis. If you are already a local "celebrity" or have a large following for some reason or another then crowd surfing can work, but for us it was just easier to use tradition equity investment.

We ended up raising our money through a medium size group of like-minded investors who we were able to give personalized attention. The process completed much quicker than we excepted and ended up closing our investment phase in a little over one month even though we had expected it to take around six.

 

[carnevoodoo]

I'm so jealous. I would rather be doing almost anything than practicing law, but alas..... Good luck to y'all.

How much funding came through investin? Did you feel like that was helpful?

Peter Zien was a lawyer and quit to buy Alesmith. He showed me his law degree when he told me that 34 was not too old to start in on brewing.

 

[Old_E]

If only it was that easy?

 

[integrator]

Lets speculate:
Fountain Square
Lockerbie
Irvington

 

[laiced]

I am SUPER intrigued by your Green Tea Pale Ale...

 

[rfavors]

Lets speculate:
Fountain Square
Lockerbie
Irvington

I am guessing Fountain Square...