Opening a Brewery

I’ve heard many people who have come before me speak about opening a brewery. They all have said that actually making beer is about 20% of the work and running a business is the other 80%. Having run several businesses before, I knew that statement would be pretty close to accurate. Sure, many look at breweries as if we sit around and drink super secret stashes of beer for 8 hours a day. Although, I won’t confirm nor deny the existence of these secret brews, nothing could be further from the truth. A brewery is a business, unique in some ways, but like many others.

As I sit here for the past week shuffling through a mountain of TTB paperwork, emailing a thousand different vendors for everything from tap handles to hose nozzles, designing T-shirts and glassware, (and I could go on for pages)… I realize that I have had precious little time to actually brew beer. I suspect after opening that not much will change. Most of our collective man hours will go into business operations such as marketing, negotiating better vendor deals, expanding our reach, etc… but we can’t and will NOT lose sight of what brought us into this business in the first place… making truly great beer!

Although making beer might actually be a small portion of our day, that portion is what fuels us! For me personally, crafting the best beer I can from the best ingredients that I can find is what it’s all about. It might not consume the majority of our time, but it is the core of what we are building this company around. Everything we do has the goal of bettering our beer and your experience. So, yes, maybe we do spend 80% of our time on non-brewing business activities, but even that is done so we can produce exceptional beer. To paraphrase a famous ex-president, “It’s the beer, stupid.”

And as for that super secret stash… well… cheers!