Happy Holidays from New Main Brewing!

Dear readers, fans, and friends,

    In lieu of a status update that might take your attention away from your loved ones for a few precious minutes, I'd like to simply offer you and your family our warmest wishes. 

    We at New Main are truly blessed to be able to share our journey with you all, and we are honored that you have chosen to be a part of it. Wherever you travel, whatever you are doing, and whomever it may be with, please take a moment to recognize the blessings in your own life and the impact they have had on you personally. We will certainly be thinking fondly of all of you who have showed your support for our dream and who continue to express your excitement at each new development. 

    We hope that very soon we can be lifting a pint of New Main beer with each of you in celebration of each other's hard work. If your holiday plans include sharing a few glasses of your favorite libations with loved ones, please do so responsibly and safely. We wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Cheers!

-David, Amanda, 

and the entire New Main Brewing family

Building a Brewery: Weeks 22 & 23

You know, I think I'm noticing a pattern here. As plans and activities become more complex, I have less and less time to post to this blog to tell y'all about it. Funny, huh? That is to say we are up to our ears in planning for the brewery, so rest assured. We're not taking any breaks (what even are those?).

Layout Planning

We spent some time in the last few weeks getting to know our building a little better. We figured out which keys open which doors and took measurements for all of the available space in the main warehouse area. We even moved a few items of furniture into the brewery so we would have somewhere to sit and plan this whole shebang. We also fine-tuned our renovation list based on closer inspection of the facilities. We're still on track, but now comes the fun part of talking to the pros and officials that have to sign off on our plans.

City Meetings

As a Civil Engineer (at the moment, anyway), I'm quite familiar with the various city approval processes in place that new businesses and developers have to go through. In fact, one of the topics that came up quite a bit while I was interviewing other brewers this time last year about the difficulties of starting their breweries was unforeseen complications with the city. Don't get me wrong, even the best laid plans can go sideways on the clearest of days, but I've seen more than a few cases that have shown me the best way to try to navigate ordinances and building codes. 

That said, I met with the Town of Pantego this week to officially introduce New Main Brewing to the folks who would be reading our permit applications and submittals in the coming months. We were very pleased to learn that some of our friends from Dr. Jeckyll's had already mentioned us to them, and that they were looking forward to meeting us. I laid out the building improvements we're hoping to get done soon and talked a little about the necessary permits and fees that would be required. All in all, it was an illuminating discussion, and I feel we have a clearer picture for what we'll need to do moving forward.

Upcoming Events

Thanks to our meeting with the fine folks at the Town of Pantego, we learned what all we need in order to invite folks to the brewery for special events. Turns out our "work parties" are pretty much in the clear, but any other event that attracts more than a handful of people is a little more involved (but still possible). That means with a little bit of effort, we'd like to start hosting some events like barbecues, brew sessions, maybe a 5K with our new neighbors, and the like. We want y'all to have the opportunity to come help us warm the brewery up to being a fun destination while we work on the small details of actually starting a brewing company. If for no other reason, we could do with some moral support along the way!

We could also do with some cheap labor, as we've mentioned before. We'd like to do some of the small things ourselves to save a buck or two like painting, minor finishing and carpentry, and maybe even a furniture drive for our taproom tables and chairs. If we get more ambitious, we could even put together a crew of beer lovers to rebuild the deck out back and replace the dilapidated fences. Of course, the brewery building machine will run on free beer, so we can celebrate each finished work day with a pint and a story or two.

We're so happy that so many of y'all are sharing our blog posts, photos, and videos on social media. It means a lot to us who work so hard to get this fledgling idea off the ground. We love it when folks say they heard about us or that they're looking forward to trying our beer. Keep up the good work!

Building a Brewery: Weeks 20 & 21

As you may have seen on Facebook, David celebrated his birthday this past weekend, so naturally there was no time to compose a blog post between all of the beer-themed events going on in North Texas. It is in fact North Texas Beer Week, a regional event that highlights all of the efforts of North Texas craft beer and recognizes those who have made their mark on the industry. We hope to be up and running by next year so that we too can begin to contribute to the diverse and outstanding craft beer scene in DFW.

But first things first, an update on our brewery. We picked up the keys to the building this past weekend. We are officially IN OUR BUILDING!!! The next step is to get to work on a few things that will make the building into a brewery such as some paint, floor drains and treatments, some exterior touchups, etc. The major renovation items are on hold until our final funding becomes available, but there are certainly a few things we can work on in the mean time. Those of y'all willing to work for beer should take note!

Being in our building also means we can start using the space for things like parties and tastings! Again, since we won't be licensed to sell our beer for some time yet, every drop we painstakingly brew is free, and we'd love to share that free beer with y'all whenever we can. We would love to partner with our new neighbors at The Runner (a running store, duh) for a fundraiser 5K through Pantego ending with refreshments at the brewery, for example. We're also down for some barbecues, holiday parties, or whatever else we can do to raise a little money for New Main. If you know someone who might be interested in an event, drop us a line at newmainbrewing@gmail.com.

Our new website is now live! Before now, www.newmainbrewing.com would redirect you to this blog for our weekly update, but thanks to our dear friends James and Melissa, we have a brand spanking new website complete with the origin of our brewery name, descriptions of the six base beers we offer, and a section for our upcoming events. Make sure to check in once and a while over the next few weeks because we will hopefully be adding to our calendar of events!

We are about to launch back into production mode to fuel some of these upcoming shenanigans. Our last brew was our outstanding IPA which is currently finishing its dry-hopping stage before getting carbonated next week. Ten gallons of the good stuff should be ready by Thanksgiving, so we're going to try to only sneak a few quality control checks before y'all get a crack at it. We're hoping to schedule a tasting event with Whats On Tap in Highland Village (head brewer Kyle's neck of the woods), another home-field tasting at Dr. Jeckyll's, and maybe a tasting at Ron's Corner in Bedford to meet even more of you fine people in the coming months.

Keep an eye out on our social media feeds very soon because we will be announcing the details of our crowdfunding campaign and all the crazy good swag we are offering. We've been hard at work on a video that captures just a slice of the whole New Main Brewing pie, so when you see it, SHARE THE HELL OUT OF IT! Seriously folks, we all know how crowdfunding works, and it only takes a few extra shares to reach all the craft beer fans out there on the interwebs. We want every craft beer drinker to hear and see what we have to offer, and we want to make sure they can be a part of our story.

For those of y'all traveling this holiday season, please get where you're going safely, designate a driver, or offer to be a designated driver. We want all of y'all to be at our upcoming tasting events, so make sure to drink craft responsibly. Happy Thanksgiving!

Building a Brewery: Week 19

My father had a lot of sayings for us growing up, most of them from his own childhood on a farm in East Texas. One that has proved true every single time is, "Never announce your plans ahead of time. All of nature comes together to thwart it." While it's a little necessary to announce our overall plan of opening the brewery before we actually open for business, he was dead-on about announcing our location. I opened my big mouth and announced that we found our location before we had the deal inked and executed. Then, as nature is want to do, we were thwarted by uncommon, inconvenient, and unexpected hold-ups.

Long story short, yes we have finally signed the lease for the Marathon Street location, but let me tell you: the stress of overcoming the difficulties we experienced for the last 3 weeks have taken significant time off my life. I tend to break such experiences down into lessons learned, so painfully simple that I can't help but remember the anguish next time the situation arises. The lesson learned throughout this ordeal is not far off from dad's admonition, "DON'T SAY A DAMN THING UNTIL IT'S FINAL." And even then, wait a while just for good measure.

So it is with great pleasure that I announce our location has been secured. The month of October has been a blur of events, contracts, signatures, fund raising, and a merciful scattering of brew days in between. Throughout the process of starting New Main Brewing Company, I am so relieved to find that the days on which I get to actually make the beer you fine people drink come as a relaxing respite from the deadlines and stress that starting your first business can bring. I can still take solace in brewing, and the hobby has not lost any of its charm or appeal to me, thank God. 

Speaking of the month of October, let's take a look back and take stock of what we have all accomplished in the last 30 days:

• Viridian Farmer's Market and Craft Beer Experience went amazing. We ran out of beer about an hour and a half-in, but that's a good thing! All of the tips and donations we received helped us purchase all the ingredients to replenish our beer pipeline.
• First ever double batch, double brew day wherein I brewed 10 gallons of pale ale and followed it right up with 10 gallons of porter. I learned the true meaning of happy-tired that day.
• LUCK's 3rd Anniversary party was an amazing who's-who of area brewers, both newcomers and veterans. It's always a good day when folks like Michael Peticolas and Chris Rigoulot tell you they like your beer. Congrats and thanks again to Jeff Dietzman and his crew at LUCK, and good luck to our fellow DFW area brewery newcomers!!
• We finalized the paperwork and funding to secure our brewery location at 3533 Marathon Street in Pantego. It's the old location for Velociti Fitness League, right behind the Runner. For those of y'all unfamiliar with the location, we are a block north of the Pioneer Parkway (Spur 303) and Smith Barry Road intersection in Pantego.
• Martin House Boo-ery Tour was INSANE. By far the biggest crowd we've been in front of, and we got amazing feedback on our Pale Ale, Porter, and Witbier. We also want to thank everyone who logged our beers on Untappd as well. Your check-ins help others find our beer more easily, so if you haven't already logged Victory or Death Pale Ale, Friday Night White Witbier, or Runaway Scrape Porter, it's not too late! For those of you who asked for the secret menu item, Bourbon Barrel Aged Bigger NTX Stout, you can log that one as well (abbreviate to BBA Bigger NTX Stout).
• I finished up the month with a nice and easy 10-gallon batch of our IPA Sunday evening, and I can't wait to serve that up soon.

Throughout this entire endeavor, and surely not for the last time, I need to recognize the hard work of everyone on the New Main Brewing Team. First and chief-most, I want to thank my lovely wife Amanda for sacrificing our free time to discuss, brew, clean, prepare, and otherwise make this brewery happen. I love you times a billion. I also need to acknowledge the tireless efforts of Jason and Caitlin Tyree. You guys stepped up in our time of need and helped us at some of our most important events, and I am forever grateful for your time, energy, and smiles. Rohde and Lisa, you guys are our cheerleaders, our muscles, and our motivation. Kyle and Erin, y'all are taking on the Herculean task of helping us start this brewery while raising your beautiful first child, and all I can say is thank you for everything y'all are doing. I can honestly say without a support group like y'all, this would not be happening.

Okay, enough with the mushy stuff. Looking forward we have a little easier schedule, but no fewer tasks to complete. We are already starting to experiment with some of our special treatments to our six-beer lineup, so be on the lookout for these at our upcoming tastings. Soon, we will be launching a crowdfunding program in order to offer y'all some of the first New Main Brewing swag and benefits ever! Things like stainless steel growlers, VIP club memberships, brewers shirts, personal barstools, naming fermenters, all the way up to brewing your very own recipe on our system and sharing your brew with your friends and family! As soon as the campaign launches, each of these limited quantity items will be first come, first serve.

Get excited, and get the word out!  More details to come, so keep checking facebook, twitter, instagram, and of course this blog. Until next time, Cheers!

Building a Brewery: Week 18

I don't always title my posts, but when I do, I make up words. The title of this week's blog post is Anxcited.

Anxcited /aNG'zided/:
  (adj.) the sensation of optimism wrapped in worry, deep-fried in hope, with a liberal sprinkling of overanalization.

e.g. David is anxcited about his new brewery and hopes it doesn't get hit by a comet.

We are finalizing our lease for the wonderful facility in Pantego, and hopefully soon we'll get to work on some sprucing up. Our next big goal is to get our funding secured and start to get our brewing equipment paid for and delivered. I'm pleased to say we're making progress on the equipment front as well, but we are still in the beginning stages of that endeavor. Apparently there's this thing called money, and everybody wants it in exchange for goods and services. We'll study up on this strange concept and report back.

We have a lot to be thankful for at New Main, and a lot of that has to do with the amazing people we have helping us out. I wanted to acknowledge our friends Jason and Caitlin for helping us pour our beer at the Viridian Farmers Market and Craft Beer experience last weekend. They showed up early, helped us get set up, poured beer, talked about our brewery, and helped us pack out once we ran out of beer a few hours in. I've been saying for a while now that beer is about people, and we're happy to share our experiences with such great people.

The Viridian Farmers Market event went incredibly well with tons of folks getting excited about the prospect of more Arlington beer. Our friends at Dirty Job Brewing were right beside us pouring their fine ales, and they were absolutely killing it, too! It's always a good day when you get to pour beer beside other beer lovers and get such great feedback from the crowd. Greg from Legal Draft also came out to share their beer with everyone under the fine Texas fall weather. I can't wait to do the next event with Viridian and meet even more great Arlingtonites!

Since we ran plumb out of beer at the Viridian event, we got the unique opportunity to brew as much as humanly possible to replenish our stores. After the event, we went to Homebrew Headquarters in Dallas to grab ingredients for not one but two 10-gallon batches of New Main beer. Sunday morning, I woke up bright and early to get the fires lit for our first 10-gallon batch of Pale Ale. A few hours later, while the Pale Ale was coming to a boil, I mashed in for a follow-up 10-gallon batch of our Porter. Only problem was that the fermenters I needed for the porter still held the previous week's 10-gallons of Wit. So it went mash, transfer, heat to boil, mash, keg, clean, chill, sanitize, transfer, heat to boil, clean, chill, sanitize, transfer, clean, pass out. A friend recently pointed out, "Hey, remember when all that crap happened on separate days?" My brewday mantra, "Beer has been made this day" was a battle cry as much as a celebration, let me assure you.

The excitement continues this weekend with our friends at LUCK Dallas celebrating their 3rd anniversary by sharing the festivities with some new breweries coming to DFW in the near future, including New Main. When LUCK was just getting started, they were fortunate enough to have friends with restaurants all around town who would allow them to use their kitchens and dining rooms to host pop-up dinners for guests. In much the same way, LUCK opens its doors every year for breweries in planning to have a chance to meet the craft beer fans who will come to know and love our beer when we get up and running. I want to thank Jeff and his crew for this amazing opportunity, and I can't wait to pour our beer for everyone. Make sure you come out to LUCK at Trinity Groves this Sunday, October 23rd from 12pm-5pm to catch a glimpse of what the next class of DFW brewers have to offer. Oh, and make sure you get there early, because there's a high chance we'll run out of our tasty brews!

Next weekend we turn it up to eleven with the Martin House Boo-ery Tour on Saturday October 29th from 12pm-5pm at the Martin House brewery in Fort Worth. Similar to LUCK's event, guest brewers will be on hand to pour free samples of our beer alongside the amazing lineup Martin House has been creating lately. We will have fresh batches of our pale ale and porter on hand, and hopefully some wit left over from this weekend. I'll even make good on my promise to have more bourbon barrel aged stout for this one, so get your tickets now! Of course in the spirit of Halloween, we'll be in full costume, and we encourage y'all to be as well. 

Building a Brewery: Week 16 & 17

Well, I sure went and stepped in it. I've been telling y'all up and down for the past month that as soon as we have a location, y'all would be the first to know. And here, I've let 2 weeks go by without officially announcing it on the blog. Well, I've fully blown the suspense now, but...

WE HAVE OUR BREWERY LOCATION!!!

In all fairness, those of y'all who came out to Pantegofest were the first to find out about our location. Plus, we posted a few times to Facebook and Instagram that we have our brewery. But I DID promise y'all I'd write about it, so here goes.

Our brewery's address is 3533 Marathon Street, Pantego, Texas 76013. A few of you may recognize this building as the Velociti Fitness League's gym or before that as the Cheerleading Unlimited Facility. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for us their time has passed, and we now have a great location to build our brewery. We took our time throughout the location search process because we wanted a place that would not only be a great brewery but also an excellent place for our fans to hang out and relax. We are extremely excited about getting to work on this facility to fix it up to be the best damn brewery in DFW, maybe even the world. Probably the world.

Some of the features of this location that we're especially stoked about:

 - Free standing, two-story structure in the middle of the main space will serve as a cold room/bar/conversation room on the first level and a taproom seating area on the second level overlooking the entire brewery (in the air-conditioned interior).

 - Second story office suite with large conference room/special event party room. Think weddings, corporate parties, birthdays, yoga, you name it.

 - Backyard patio/beer garden for a nice relaxed time sharing pints outside under the Texas sky.

 - Plenty of open space adjacent to the building (included with the lease) for overflow parking, outdoor events like concerts, homebrew competitions, chili cook-offs, taco festivals, etc.

There is plenty of work for us to do to turn this great building into a great beer production facility and family hang-out. We'll have a few pros coming on board to do the real heavy lifting (and if you or anyone you know is a contractor of any type, get in touch with us), but we're planning on having a few events at the brewery before we open where volunteers can come roll up their sleeves and help us with things like painting, deck building, decorating, yard game building, and some more stuff that will probably come up. I'm sure y'all know by now, but we pay our volunteers in beer, so booyah.

As you can imagine, renovating a building and building our actual brewery is not cheap, but we've been working very hard to get our funding set up. We plan to launch a Kickstarter very soon so that y'all can be a part of our journey in exchange for some awesome swag, opportunities to secure your seat at our taproom bar, naming of various parts of the brewery, all the way up to actually brewing a beer with us! 

We've wasted no time drawing up our big plans for the brewery. This is an incredibly busy but supremely exciting time for all of us at New Main Brewing Company, and we certainly want to share our elation with all of y'all. Please come out and support us at our upcoming tasting events:

Our next pouring event will be at the Viridian Farmers Market, Craft Beer Experience, and Pumpkin Patch on Saturday, October 15th in Arlington. We will be offering fresh tastings of our Pale Ale, Porter, IPA, and Stout, and of course getting all basic up in there with some pumpkin-type things. 

The following weekend, we have the honor and privilege of pouring our beer at LUCK's 3rd Anniversary Party at Trinity Groves in Dallas. We've been going to LUCK since they opened 3 years ago for their outstanding menu and expertly curated beer list featuring only local Texas craft breweries. We are so thrilled to wish everyone at LUCK a happy anniversary while we pour our beer alongside many other up-and-coming breweries in the DFW area. If you want to get an idea for what the next 3 years will bring to the DFW craft brew scene, this event is an absolute necessity.

We will also be pouring at Martin House's 4th annual Booery Tour Saturday, October 29th at their brewery along the banks of the Trinity in Fort Worth. This is another event where the new kids on the block get to flex their muscles and introduce their beers to the masses. We should have a fresh batch of the Wit to add to our lineup for this event, and we may even get crazy with some of the variations we've been talking about. I'm told the costume contest at the Booery Tour has some stiff competition, so bring your A-game. No tricks, all treats, great beer, and good eats. See y'all there!

Special Announcement!

Our newest New Main Brewing t-shirts are for sale now! We are selling men's and ladies' sizes small through 2XL in red and blue (for those of y'all supporting the Rangers!) featuring our favorite beer quote on the front, "Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer" and our logo on the back. You can purchase these comfortable t-shirts at any of our upcoming events, or if you're real nice, you can reach out to us through our email newmainbrewing@gmail.com

and we'll make it happen, cap'n! We accept cash, all major credit cards, and online payments through PayPal. Show us some love, grab an awesome shirt, and Come Find Your New Main!

"Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer."
-Henry Lawson
T-shirts for sale $20!

New Main Brewing at Pantegofest this Saturday!

We've been talking about it non-stop for the past month or so, and the wait is finally (almost) over! New Main Brewing Company will be pouring more free beer at Pantegofest this Saturday, September 24th in beautiful Pantego, Texas! 

For those of y'all unfamiliar with Pantego, get familiar: Pantego is a small town located inside Arlington, Texas near the intersection of Bowen Road and Park Row Drive. Pantegofest is a great way to meet all of the people and businesses in Pantego, including New Main Brewing, so we want to see y'all out there! The event is free until 5pm, then just $10 to take in the festival and live music.

This year marks a change for Pantegofest because all of the festivities will take place in one day. Previously, the entire weekend featured local musical acts, local artisans and businesses, and featured multiple bounce houses for the kiddos. This year, they have compressed all of that and more into a single day of fun and excitement, complete with a Pet Parade, VIP Beer area, and over 40 vendors. 

The feature event is a Steak Cookoff with cash prizes up to $1000! There will also be an Appetizer Challenge and even a Kids Cook-off! Winners may advance to the national level as well, so if grilling is your thing, make sure to stop in for a taste. Tickets for these meals can be purchased on the Pantegofest website here. The evening will end with hometown heroes Dawn + Hawkes, The Brandon Rhyder Band and Chris Knight on the main stage to ring in Autumn the right way. 

But as you may expect, we're pretty interested in the craft beer part of Pantegofest. You can sample all sorts of local beer and wine if you purchase a $10 VIP Tent ticket. We will have several of our beers available for tasting including our Victory or Death Pale Ale, Friday Night White Ale, Runaway Scrape Porter, and our famous Bigger NTX Stout on tap and flowing all day. We may even have some New Main Brewing swag for you to purchase to support our opening in the near future. If you're extra good, we might even have a few bottles of our limited edition Bourbon Barrel-Aged Bigger NTX stout available to taste as well. As before, we can't charge for a drop of it so it is all FREE! (Of course donations are accepted and we might even do a little dance for you to show our thanks!)

Pantegofest is one of the best local events to kick off the fall season, so bring the whole fam damily out to meet us. New Main Brewing Company is so excited to be joining this community! We can't wait to pour you a beer and think about all of the good things Autumn has to offer. Speaking of things to look forward to in the coming months...

We have some exciting upcoming events to announce! 

We will be pouring New Main beer at the Viridian Farmer's Market, Craft Beer Experience, and Pumpkin Patch Saturday, October 15th at the Viridian in North Arlington. Come enjoy the cooler weather and beautiful Autumn colors with us while tasting our award-winning beer. We might even add some pumpkin spice to a beer or two in the spirit of the event! Get everything you need to cook a hearty fall meal and taste some great craft beer with us.

We have also confirmed that we will be participating in Martin House's Boo-ery Tour on Saturday, October 29th. If you've never been to a Boo-ery Tour at Martin House, you are definitely missing out! Martin House have been pulling out all the stops lately releasing new beer after new beer alongside their already stellar main-stays. We will of course have our own craft brews available for tasting including some crowd favorites from our recent events, Prairie Sky Saison and Gone Toobin' IPA! Make sure to show up in costume and participate in the contest. I have it on good authority that the winners will receive all kinds of Martin House goodies and maybe more, so BE THERE!!

Finally, I'm so excited to announce that we will be participating in LUCK's 3rd Anniversary Party in Dallas on Sunday, October 23rd. It's hard to believe it's only been 3 years since we've been graced with the amazing food and super local Texas craft beer selection that LUCK has to offer. We personally love the pretzels with beer cheese fondue and stone ground mustard, and their "Texas Style" Signature Pastrami sandwich is insanely delicious. Pair anything on their menu with a constantly updated list of the best craft beer DFW has to offer, and it's no surprise to see how popular this place is, year after year. We will be pouring free tastings of our beer alongside some other up and coming breweries in the area, so come celebrate 3 years with LUCK and get a sneak peek of what the next 3 years has to offer!

It looks like our October is going to be pretty busy, in more ways than one. Last week we teased that we are very close to securing our location, and at the time of this publishing, we are even closer! Believe us, y'all will be the first to know about our location once we sign the lease, so keep checking in and sharing with your friends. We hope to see y'all real soon at our events!

Building a Brewery Week 14

All is right with the New Main Brewing world. Beer is happily fermenting away, finished beer is carbonating to perfection in the kegerator, ideas for upcoming events are being shared and brought to fruition. It seems this is the calm before the beer storm coming soon to a glass near you. While we prepare for our next wave of pourings, big announcements, and major progress, let's take one last look at our inventory with the quiet excitement one only knows right before their entire world changes.

Location, Location, Location

We have been working very hard in the last few weeks to secure our brewery location. And while it may sound like same song, second verse, we don't have any news on that front quite yet. I can tell you we are very interested in a particular location, and we're working on a proposal for it as we speak. I can tell you it has a lot of potential for our brewery. I can tell you it is very easy to find via major thoroughfares in Pantego/West Arlington/Dalworthington Gardens. But aside from all that, we need to keep mum to cover all our bases. Rest assured, the location we choose for New Main will be an excellent beer production facility, a great place to hang out with friends and family, and will be an interesting and fun addition to the already diverse DFW craft brewing landscape. 

Beer

For those of y'all keeping up with this blog, you are well aware of how hard we've been working to brew up a ton of beer for our upcoming events. We now have at least one batch of each of our beers in various stages of the brewing process with the exception of our multiple award-winning saison, which was so popular we plum ran out of it! What that means for you is every beer you try in the next few months at our events will be the freshest offering available, just like we intend for our brewery's taproom. You can get a taste (no pun intended) of what it will be like to sit at our bar and not only enjoy your "Main" go-to beer, but also try some of our "New" treatments. That's right folks, in addition to our 6 Main beers, we will have a few special versions available at our upcoming events for you to taste and compare. It's kind of our thing. 

Where can you find us?

We will be pouring our beer at Pantegofest Saturday, September 24th in beautiful Pantego, Texas. Pantego is a town within a town, nestled in west-central Arlington. It's incredibly easy to get to from Spur 303 Pioneer Parkway and/or Bowen Road, and the festival will be held on Park Row near Pantego Christian Academy. Do yourself a favor and get your tickets now for the VIP beer tent so that you can try all we have to offer. Then stick around for the steak cook-off, live music, and other great attractions in town. 

We will also be pouring our beer at the Viridian Farmers Market, Craft Beer Experience, and Pumpkin Patch on October 15th at the Viridian in north Arlington. Viridian is a master planned community just north of I-30 on Collins that offers running/hiking trails along the Trinity River, small boat sailing on some of its picturesque lakes, and a great community center where you can relax and have a drink or two with friends.  We can't wait to set up our booth, pick out a pumpkin or two, and share some of our fall-themed variations with y'all. Make sure to check out the Facebook event for more information. 

We have also confirmed that we will be pouring our beer at Martin House's Boo-ery Tour (in costume, of course) Halloween weekend. This event is one of the best events we've ever found to learn about new breweries in DFW before they ever open their doors. Hell, it's where we met Dirty Job Brewing and HopFusion Ale Works to name just a few! In addition to tasting some amazing beer, you can also participate in a costume contest and win prizes. You can expect no tricks, only treats from New Main, and we can't wait to pour some beer for y'all. 

We've also been speaking with a couple local craft beer bars and tap houses about hosting a few more tasting events in the coming months. We don't have anything on paper yet, but we're hoping to set up tastings throughout October and November so you can have plenty of chances to snag some of our special limited edition variations before the holidays. 

As we continue this insanely awesome journey to opening our doors, I want to thank all of you who are going out of your way to keep up with our progress. It's always a joy when y'all tell us you're reading the blog or listening to our podcast. This is easily the biggest undertaking we've ever started, and we are nowhere near the finish line yet, but your constant support gives us the energy and passion to keep on keepin' on. We promise to repay you with free beer at our upcoming events, so come out and see us. Cheers!

Building a Brewery: Week 13

Nothing like a little football and a short week to really get this season started off right. It won't be long now until we're pouring our beer at Pantegofest and Viridian Farmers Market and Craft Beer Experience. Now that it's starting to be pretty tolerable outside, we're rolling up our sleeves to get this brewery built. Here's what we accomplished this week:

Location

We are zeroing in on our brewery location, and we hope to announce it in the coming weeks. As we've stated before, we are staying true to our promise to locate in the Pantego-Dalworthington Gardens-West Arlington area. Of the options we are exploring, all are very easy to get to using major thoroughfares with plenty of parking when you get there. We are very excited to finalize our location and get to work turning it into our brewery, so believe me, we'll let y'all know when we have our spot.

Podcast

This week we sat down with our friend Justin and discussed the truly epic journey he took through the Colorado craft beer scene for his 30th birthday. Three days, 70+ beers, multiple breweries and taphouses, this one was something for the record books. When Amanda and I took our 5th anniversary trip last year to Portland and Seattle, we racked up about 75 beers over the course of a week, but to pull off Justin's beer feat in 3 days?! In true Atypical DFW Podcast fashion, we tried to keep up with Justin's story with a large sampling of our own, so the end of the show is understandably hilarious. Go check it out!

Deep Ellum's Labor of Love 5 Homebrew Competition and Festival

This was our third year participating in the pouring event at Deep Ellum for the Labor of Love Homebrew Competition. Now technically, we could have entered as New Main since we are not a properly licensed beer manufacturer yet. However, we thought we would sit this one out and focus on some of our upcoming events instead. It was the middle of our Wit brew session Saturday when we received word that the festival organizers were looking for more people to pour at the event Sunday evening. I phoned the coordinator to ask if we would be allowed to pour since our head brewer Kyle Nelson had entered his recipes for the competition, and they happily approved. We were also very fortunate to be able to set up next door to another great Arlington brewery in planning, Dirty Job Brewing. If you haven't had the opportunity to try their beer yet, get your butts to Dr. Jeckyll's Beer Lab on September 17th for their free tasting!

So we bottled our pittance of an inventory, loaded up the car, and shoved off to Dallas Sunday afternoon. We didn't have very much in the way of beer because, well, y'all have been drinking it all! We are in the process of replenishing our stores, but all we had available were a couple gallons of Victory or Death Pale Ale, a portion of the keg of Gone Toobin' IPA, a couple six-packs of Runaway Scrape Porter, a very select few bottles of our Bourbon Barrel-Aged Bigger NTX Stout, and a single growler of Kyle's Belgian Quad. I'm proud to say we ran out of every last drop of our beer by 8PM that night, and we received excellent feedback from the festival goers and judges. 

Kyle entered the IPA, the Quad, and our Saison into consideration for the competition. While the IPA scored an average of 41.5, an objectively GREAT score, sadly it didn't place. The Quad also didn't make it into medals for the Belgian Strong category, but the Saison kept its award-winning tradition alive by earning a silver medal this year. Score sheets were very positive and offered a few suggestions to further fine tune each beer, which was helpful. I'm proud to have Kyle as our head brewer, and I can't wait to share more of our award-winning beer with you all soon.

Brewing

As I mentioned, we lightened up a little by brewing our Wit on Saturday. The Stout and Porter are both moving through the conditioning phase, and we just kegged our base batch of stout yesterday. The Porter should be ready for kegs this weekend, and we are planning to brew the Pale Ale Saturday morning as well. We will also be joined on brewday by Atypical DFW Podcast's own Jason to finish filming our hotly anticipated video for New Main Brewing's upcoming crowd-funding campaign. We have some amazing offers, prizes, rewards, and incentives that will help you help us bring our brewery to life. Keep an eye out for some big announcements soon, folks. 

Don't forget to mark your calendars for our upcoming events. We will be pouring beer at Pantegofest September 24th alongside the steak cook-off, live music, and fun for all ages. We will also be pouring our beer at the Viridian Farmer's Market and Craft Beer Experience October 15th in Arlington. If you have a friend or family member that hasn't heard of us, take the time to tell them about our fantastic, award-winning beer, and bring them to our next pouring event. We hope to pepper in there another couple of tastings at our local favorite craft beer bars, so if you want us at your own watering holes, let them know you want to see New Main Brewing there! Cheers!

Building a Brewery: Week 12

Ahhh, autumn. The summer is officially over, the leaves start to change color, our thoughts turn to darker beers and bonfires. Oh, and literally pumpkin spice everything. We are gearing up for a fall filled with New Main beer and opportunities for y'all to help us spread the word about our brewery.

Brewing like Madmen

The last week has seen three separate brew sessions to get some of our heavier offerings ready for our upcoming pouring events. I brewed two batches of our Stout and a double batch of the Porter to have ready in time for Pantegofest, Viridian Farmers Market and Craft Beer Experience, and a few other events we are anticipating in the coming months. Thanks to a killer sale on fermenters, I was able to snag 4 brand new vessels that should make the coming ramp-up in production run smooth. I am happy to report all 4 currently house New Main beer chugging happily away through primary fermentation. We plan to have plenty of each base beer available on draft at our events, but we will also be rolling out some variations of each beer to give you a taste of what New Main is really about - pushing the envelope.

Our beer will offer something for everyone in the way of styles. As many of you who have had the fortune to attend our tastings know, our six base beers will be Saison, Witbier, Pale Ale, IPA, Porter, and Stout. Once you try each beer and find your "main" beer, we will gradually roll out "new" versions of that beer for you to compare to the original for a deeper appreciation of the base style and flavors imparted by the special treatment. These new versions will come in four categories: Fruited, Spiced, Wood-Aged, and Spirited. 

At our upcoming events, you can expect us to complement our base stout with our widely popular pineapple stout, a winter-spiced (not pumpkin) version, and an oak-aged version as well. For the stout's Spirited offering, we have been conditioning 1792 barrel-aged stout for the past few months, and I believe the time is near at hand for cracking open one or two of those bad boys. You see, folks? With a little patience and creativity, one beer has now become five, each as different as the next but all born of the same brew. There's a lesson in there somewhere...

We also have our award-winning Porter coming soon to glasses near you. We are still working on some special treatments for this beer that will delight and intrigue, but we have pulled off some pretty awesome variations in the past that I think are worth revisiting. Did someone say hatch chile peppers? Yes. Yes they did. I'm thinking of rustling up a few other South Texas influences to contribute to the Porter portfolio, so stay tuned to find out what kind of creations come out of our carboys.

Don't worry, we will also see the return of the lighter-colored beers as well. I hope to knock out a batch of Witbier this weekend and we'll have more of our hoppier brews available in the coming weeks as well. With those styles, fresher really is better, so we're waiting until the last possible second to brew those to maximize their quality. We just needed to get some of the heavy hitters brewed and conditioning to perfection first.

Even though we love our Craft Beer adventures
in Fort Worth, we promise our brewery
will be located in the Arlington area!

Locations
We have been scouring the Pantego-Dalworthington Gardens-Arlington commercial real estate listings lately to find the best candidate for our brewery's location. We have narrowed the search down to a few exciting prospects, and we're currently working out the details of securing our favorite. While I can't really offer you anything specific at the moment, I can say that announcement should be very soon to follow. I can also say that we are staying true to our promise of locating the brewery in the neighborhood that taught us how to brew and drink, right here in the DWG-Pantego-Arlington area.

Funding

Now that the business plan is in its final stages of polishing, we will be discussing our funding options with banks and investors very soon. After several seasons worth of Shark Tank binge-watching, some well placed advice from trusted confidants and friends, and lots of conversations with people who have been there before, I feel confident that we will be properly funded and building our actual brewery before the end of the year. As I said last week, things are starting to get pretty damn real around here.

How Can I Help?
We are very lucky to already have so many outstanding fans of our beer. Many of you have already come forward and offered in some capacity to help us with our plans, and I want to thank each of you from the bottom of my heart. This is a HUGE undertaking, and it's certainly one that cannot be done alone. If you've offered any kind of favor or service that I haven't taken you up on yet, please don't think that I'm refusing your help. I'm just incredibly busy and haven't had the time to let you help us yet! For those of you with any kind of experience, service,  "I know a guy", volunteering requests, etc., please shoot me a quick email at newmainbrewing@gmail.com with whatever help you have to offer so that I don't forget about you. Rest assured, you will be richly rewarded for your efforts, and we will gladly welcome you to the New Main family.

Probably the most important help we can receive from ANYONE is to wear your New Main Brewing t-shirts out and about! If you're heading to one of the other breweries in the area, wear your shirt and strike up a conversation while waiting in line for your tasty DFW craft beer. If you're heading to a Rangers or Cowboys game, wear your red or blue New Main shirt and tell your entire seating section about us. Tell your favorite bar or watering hole about us, and we just might come do a free tasting there! Just pick one person a day that you live or work with, and mention our name and what we're planning. There are only so many posts we can make on social media, but like and share each one so that your friends and friends of friends will see our name for the first time.

We're building this brewery for the sole purpose of supplying you and everyone you know with outstanding beer, so spread the good news! Come find your New Main.

Building a Brewery: Week 11

If you haven't heard by now, independent brewers in Texas just regained a constitutional right that was taken away in 2013. The victory has to do with a brewery's distribution rights and when they can be sold or exchanged. I'll let you read the much better and more succinct articles out there if you're interested, but needless to say, this is HUGE news for Texas craft brewers! We've made a little progress of our own.

Brew Session

We decided last minute that we would take the opportunity to brew at Dr. Jeckyll's last Saturday. Okay, it was rainy and I didn't feel like cleaning out the garage to brew inside. Either way, Amanda, Scott, and I brewed up a fresh batch of our American Stout to be ready for the coming cooler months. We were joined for a part of brew day by some of our homebrewing friends, Laura & Shane, who are no strangers to big, dark, heavy beers. If y'all are keeping score at home, Shane & Laura have already helped us with our beer before by donating a few sweet honey porters to help us salvage our overly-bitter IPA. We're excited to see how this batch of our favorite stout comes out, and we're even more excited to get behind the mash paddle again. Many more brews coming in the future, so stay tuned.

Business Stuff

After months of tweaking, writing, reading, re-writing, researching, cross-referencing, more re-writing, I think our business plan is finished. I will be calling a few close friends and confidants over the next week or two to go over it with us to make sure every question can be easily answered. This means we will be getting financials set up in the next month or so, or at least beginning the conversation. Hopefully we will be making some real headway into getting this thing off the ground properly. It's starting to feel pretty damn real around here, folks.

Location

We are still not locked into a lease on a location yet. We have been tapping our personal resources trying to find a suitable location in the Goldilocks zone for breweries, and there is still some good potential out there. At this point we know our first, second, and third choice for locations and all that's left is the negotiation. As I've said a hundred times, starting any business is expensive, and opening a brewery is no exception. We want to make sure the place we get is appropriately priced so we can focus on brewing excellent beer and getting it to you fine people. With the business plan finished, we will have a lot of the answers potential landlords will be looking for, so hopefully we'll have news very soon on this front. 

It's Good to Have Friends

The over-arching theme of our brewery building is getting by with a little help from our friends. We are very fortunate to know some excellent people in the craft beer industry, and we wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the people that have helped and inspired us recently. Cristall and Robert at Sleepy Panther Bottle Shop in Fort Worth get a huge shout out for running an awesome business with some of the best selection of craft beer anywhere in DFW. We recently participated in a PokemonGo meetup hosted by Sleepy Panther near Panther Island Pavilion in Fort Worth, and we had a blast. (we caught so many Magikarp, omg y'all) Make sure to head over to Magnolia in Fort Worth to pick up a mixed six-pack and/or some rare bombers.

We also want to direct your attention over to our fellow brewers coming soon to Arlington, Dirty Job Brewing. They are nearing the end of their own Booster.com t-shirt sale to support their brewery opening, so take a moment and go show them some love. You can complete your entire Arlington Craft Beer t-shirt collection, adding to Division and Legal Draft, of course. Derek and his bunch make some awesome beer that we've sampled extensively on the Podcast, and we can't wait to be brewing alongside Dirty Job to make Arlington a Craft Beer City. Speaking of the podcast...

______ Podcast

Those of y'all who subscribe and regularly listen to the podcast know that we are about to change things up a great deal. We are in the process of shifting the format of the show to focus more on craft beer, and we'll be bringing new guests on regularly to help you meet the people in DFW who are working hard to bring the nectar of the gods to you. Without giving too much away, we want y'all to get excited about our changes, so make sure you listen to Atypical DFW Podcast while you still can to get hints and inside info before the switch. Once we switch, Atypical is going bye-bye, and you'll have a new show with a new name and a different cast of characters. Don't worry, we'll still make sure to share our updates and shamelessly plug New Main until we're blue in the face. Hope y'all are as excited as we are!

Upcoming Events

Don't forget to mark your calendars for your chances to sample our beer and share it with your friends and family. We will be pouring at Pantegofest Saturday, September 24th alongside some great local breweries. Steak cook-off, all-day live entertainment including Chris Knight, bounce houses for the kiddos, and lots of local artists and vendors - what more could you want from a local small-town event?! Come check us out and show our future home community some love. Click this link to get your $10 tickets for the VIP craft beer tent and avoid the line.

We will also be pouring at the Viridian Farmers Market and Craft Beer Experience October 15th in Arlington. Viridian hosts farmers markets regularly bringing the freshest local produce you can find grown right in our own communities by our neighbors and friends. You definitely won't want to miss this one, not only because you can get the finest ingredients for your home cooking, but we will be pouring free samples of our beer for you to try! Fresh fruits and veggies, a pumpkin patch, craft beer. Yep, it's fall in Texas, y'all.

We are so grateful for and proud of our Texas brewers that fought long and hard to have our rights restored, and we want to sincerely thank Peticolas Brewing, Live Oak Brewing, and everyone who was involved in making this week's historic ruling possible. Your hard work in and out of the brewery continues to inspire us, and we can't wait to be a part of the Texas Craft Beer landscape soon. Cheers!