Reflections on 2010
Four years ago, armed with only a turkey fryer and a few plastic buckets, we set out on a journey to launch a brewery in 2010. At the time, we knew very little about the brewing industry, so our timeline was meant to be far enough into the future to give us a chance to learn it, but not too far away as to make it easy on us.
With one day left in 2010, it is clear that we won’t quite make our goal. However, we are still aiming for an early 2011 launch and the pieces are slowly falling into place. One thing we underestimated when setting a timeline was how anal Jeff was. It has taken us the better part of 4 years to perfect 2 recipes. That is a lot of perfecting. Our Eye Patch Ale alone has gone through 20+ iterations, most of them with relatively minor changes, to get it just right. And we’re confident with our final recipes.
You may have noticed a slowdown in brewing operations lately. That is due in part with our confidence in final recipes, but also coincides with us ramping up other aspects of the business. Such as licensing. And banking. You know, the sexy stuff.
While we aren’t going to make our original 2010 launch goal, we are excited with how far we have come with year, and think the extra waiting is going to pay off. Thanks so much for taking this journey with us, whether you’ve attended on a Monday or simply read our blog from time to time. We really do appreciate it, and can’t wait for you to take the next step of our journey with us as well.
Stay tuned, exciting stuff is happening!
A friendly reminder…
…that we will not be brewing tonight. See ya’ll in January!
Merry Happy!
No brewing tonight ? we’ll see ya’ll after Christmas. Enjoy it!
The Joys of Banking
Over the past 2 weeks it has been my pleasure to meet with many banks with the express purpose of deciding where we should put our money. I am by trade a marketing guy, and my role with the brewery is Marketing Guy and Master of Mind Control. Not exactly the one you would peg as a lover of banking, especially when Jeff deals with numbers and ROI and spreadsheets on a daily basis.
However, I’ve really enjoyed it. I find myself enjoying all aspects of starting a business, even if they aren’t necessarily my strong suit. As we’ve been moving closer to launch, we’ve spent a lot of our energy putting the right team in place ? a lawyer, an accountant, a t-shirt vendor, and yes ? a banker.
While our immediate banking needs will be pretty basic, we like to think of this relationship as a long-term commitment. We are relational fellows (we did start out of a bible study, after all), and strive for strong relationships from everyone we interact with. That obviously includes our end consumers, but it also includes the guy with the coat and tie handling our money. Just take a look at our logo and you’ll see the appreciation we have for coats and ties.
So here’s to you, banker dudes. Thanks for doing the boring stuff so we can make beer.
Brewing canceled due to poor circulation
Have you been outside today? Yes? Okay, enough said.
A gross error in our order fulfillment strategy
One Micah Kemp has alerted us of a problem with our fulfillment of orders in our new online store. Specifically, Micah says (via Twitter):
We apologize for our lapse and would like to assure you that we are doing everything in our power to delay all shipments until the next Monday night arrives, whenever that may be. I am just glad (for Micah’s sake) that his package didn’t arrive on a Saturday.
A non-Monday weekday is bad enough. But a weekend? Dear God, help us all.
No brewing because the garage is too clean
We spent a good chunk of our Saturday cleaning and organizing the garage. Which is quite unfortunate, since we will not be able to brew tomorrow due to a flurry of last minute planning mishaps. Plus, the garage is just too clean now to brew. We wouldn’t want to mess that up. If it makes you feel any better, it’s supposed to drop to 20°F on Monday night. No fun.
