Building a Brewery: Week 4

Well, just over a month has passed since we began posting our progress on the blog. Our Booster.com t-shirts are now shipping and/or shipped, we're diving headlong into financial stuff for our business plan, and we're finding a location for our next tasting event to share our award winning beer with y'all.

T-shirts and a contest!

As I just mentioned, everyone who ordered a t-shirt from our booster.com campaign should be receiving them very soon. In fact, you may want to check your front door. Once again, a million thanks for everyone who supported us financially, on social media, telling family & friends, or just in spirit. We're doing this to share our beer with y'all. For those of y'all who bought a shirt, we have one further request that won't cost you another dime, and may earn you a pretty sweet return on your investment. When you get your shirt, we want to see your smiling faces on social media! Snap a quick selfie, group photo, parkour video, planking, street magic, cartwheeling, or whatever you love to do wearing your beautiful New Main Brewing t-shirt. 

Make sure to tag New Main Brewing because we will select the best, most creative, or most hilarious photo from all of our supporters, and that person will win a one-year pass for our VIP club, complete with 3 free growler fills, first access to new beers before they're released, and some great New Main Brewing swag. Get your NMBC t-shirt photo in pronto, because we will make our selection by July 15th!

Drinks Play

We also had a freaking BLAST playing with Blake of Drinks Play last Friday for a live stream through Twitch. We crushed some Mario Kart, Amanda & Blake teamed up for Donkey Kong Country 2, Blake magicked his way through Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, and we had some hilarious reactions to the latest virtual reality jump-scare games through Sony. We of course had plenty of New Main Brewing's Wit and Stout on hand for liquid courage. We can't wait to do another live-streaming event with Blake and Drinks Play soon, so we will let y'all know when to tune in and interact with us in real time!

Tasting Events

We are currently looking for a new location to host a tasting party. Not that we don't love Dr. Jeckyll's and Kool Keg, because we REALLY do, but we want to get out and meet some more folks and pour free beer for everyone. We're looking at a couple more Arlington places as well as our Head Brewer's favorite place in Highland Village. If any of y'all have suggestions, feel free to comment on this blog or our Facebook page, and we'll see if we can set it up with the owners. 

Podcast

If you haven't checked out Atypical DFW Podcast yet, WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?! The podcast is free on iTunes, Podbean, Mixlr, anywhere you can get your podcasts. You get to hear us talk every week about local beer, weigh in on whatever crazy things making news each week, we bring in great guests from the Texas brewing scene and industry, and we're currently working through a series of blind taste-testing of the many different styles of beer Texas breweries are producing. 

Tonight (Thursday June 30th) we will be LIVE with Sleepy Panther Bottle Shop owner Cristall Heisch to check out the various Kolsch style beers that Texas breweries are putting out there. We are super excited about this show, and it will be a blast so make sure you tune in live, and hit up the chat while you're at it! Don't forget to stop by Sleepy Panther Bottle Shop on Magnolia in Fort Worth!

Oh, and it's Atypical DFW Podcast creator Jason's birthday today! We'll be handing out some birthday swats for sure! Happy birthday buddy!

That's all for this week. We've been busy with a few more mundane details of building a business like insurance, legal, accounting, etc. which doesn't exactly make for riveting reading material. Rest assured, New Main Brewing is continuing towards its destination one step at a time. Til next week!

Building a Brewery: Week 3

I'd like to start off this week with sincere thanks to everyone who supported our first fundraiser and bought a shirt from us. Together we raised over $5,000 that will go directly towards our equipment fund. We were certainly humbled by the process, but encouraged by everyone's interest in helping us make this dream a reality. Shirts should be printing now, and will be shipped by the first week of July. Make sure to snap a picture with your shirt when it arrives and post it on our Facebook page!

Tasting Event at Dr. Jeckyll's Beer Lab

I brought our beerhemoth out to Dr. Jeckyll's last Friday to share some beer with everyone. I had the base wit (without spice), Centennial Pale Ale, our Stout, and a few bottles of our bourbon barrel aged stout as well. We are very fortunate to continue to see new faces each time we pour, so keep up the good work mentioning us to all your friends! The next time we have a tasting event, we should have our award winning beers available: Kyle's gold medal Saison and my best-in-show Porter. Stay tuned!

Business Plan

We met with the Small Business Development Center in Arlington to get some pointers on our business plan last week. Our representative took the time to explain common pitfalls, pros and cons, and general structuring advice that should help us polish up the plan and have it ready to show potential investors soon. She was pretty impressed with our research and ideas, but she also gave us good advice and some great resources to back up our assertions and projections. Blah, blah, blah, David get back to the beer! 

Texas Craft Brewers Guild Meeting

Kyle and Amanda joined me at our first ever Texas Craft Brewers Guild North Texas Brewer's night at the Lakewood Brewery and taproom Tuesday evening. Food was catered by Intrinsic (also in Garland) and provided by Country Malt Group, a brewery supply company. We bumped elbows with some of our favorite brewers and had a few folks try our witbier, too. We made a lot of good contacts and gained some sage advice from fellow brewers, and I can't wait for next month's meeting at Community Beer Co. Big thanks to Wim Bens and Lakewood for hosting!

Atypical DFW Podcast

This week's episode of Atypical DFW Podcast featured beer blogger Josh Wright of Fort Worth Brew Scene. Great guy, very knowledgeable about beer, and very passionate about the beer culture our communities are fostering. He produces great material including interviews, news and events, and the occasional reflective post about the state of craft beer in general. We cracked open one of each of New Belgium's 25th anniversary Fat Tire variety pack and discussed the various treatments the collaborating breweries made to the beer. If you have a chance, go pick up a 25th anniversary variety pack, and DEFINITELY go check out www.fortworthbrewscene.com!

Drinks Play

This Friday, June 24 we will be participating in another fundraiser, this time at the hands (literally) of Blake Peveto. Blake will be live-streaming some gameplay of a variety of titles through Friday night, fueled by lovely New Main Beer of course. I have word we may even be able to stream some virtual reality gaming as well! Brave Blake will muscle through Friday night and into the wee hours of Saturday morning for your entertainment, so make sure to check it out HERE! Also, make sure you follow @DrinksPlay on twitter and subscribe to their YouTube channel!

Thanks for reading, everyone. See you next week!

Building a Brewery: Week 2

We've received a lot of great feedback on this new series so far with last week's first installment. Please keep the comments coming, and we'll make sure to add anything you'd like to know about our brewery building process.

Look at all of those color options! Collect the whole set!

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of this week, I want to remind all of you reading this post to DROP EVERYTHING AND GO BUY A T-SHIRT RIGHT NOW BEFORE THE SALE IS OVER!!! You have less than a week to grab your "Coming Soon, Thanks to Me!!" New Main Brewing t-shirt before they start printing and shipping. This is a limited edition shirt, never to be printed again, and once the sale is over, it's over. We don't have an unlimited supply of this shirt; Booster.com will only print the shirts y'all order. The ONLY way you can get this shirt is to order it NOW! Sale ends June 19, and shirts begin shipping the first week of July.

Click HERE to get your shirt while you still can!!!

Our merchandise from here on out will focus more on our brand and identity rather than our startup, so we'll be dropping elements like "Coming Soon" in favor of more New-Main-y stuff. We will have other designs available in the coming months, so keep an eye out on social media for further info. But seriously, folks. Get your t-shirts now. We'll wait.

Okay, got your order in? Great! And thank you so much for supporting us!

Now for our progress...

Location

We found a new intriguing option for our brewery location this week after walking to our favorite local restaurant to celebrate 6 years of marriage. We love this restaurant not only for the AMAZING wild mushroom risotto, but also for their excellent selection of craft beer and fine wine. While asking about their current craft beer selection (which at the time of this article features Audacity's Evil Cream Soda, 7% ABV, excellent for dessert), our waiter explained that he too was a craft beer lover. We casually mentioned our plans, and the owner of the restaurant recommended checking availability on the space next door.

This is still very preliminary, but we really liked the space. Without giving too much away, this would place the brewery in essentially the same neighborhood we've been looking into, would be incredibly close to home for us, and would be near a great retail and restaurant area. Some of y'all may have figured out this puzzle, but we're hoping a few more pieces fall into place soon so we can officially announce it. We still have a couple options we are considering, so missing out on this location wouldn't be the end of the world. But it sure would be pretty cool if we land this spot!

Future Tastings

I caught a brief reprieve from the hectic office this week, so I took the day off to get some important business stuff done. We set up our official bank account, spoke with an events venue, and filmed a little more footage of Arlington for our upcoming videos. We are also planning another tasting event with Dr. Jeckyll's Beer Lab in Pantego for this Friday evening. This time around, we have our original wit recipe (without the rosemary, sage, and basil), an all-Centennial pale ale, a tiny bit more stout left, a good measure of the American IPA, and maybe even a bottle or two of bourbon barrel aged imperial stout. We will also be taking last minute orders for our "Coming Soon, Thanks to Me!!" shirts before the sale ends FOREVER! If you haven't gotten your shirts yet, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?!??

I've also been mentioning a special event coming up sometime soon. We're talking free beer tasting, catered food, maybe a guest tap or two, and some great local live musicians. This is going to be one hell of a summer party, so stay tuned for more details as we have them. We should also have some cool new shirts and other merchandise for sale there as well for those of y'all building up your New Main Brewing collection.

Upcoming Beer

Kyle and I have both been busy brewing beer for you all to try. Kyle brewed up a batch of his award-winning Saison to share with y'all, and we have pulled our award-winning porter recipe back out as well this week. In a few short weeks, we will be sharing fresh batches of the beers that have received outstanding critic feedback, and we can't wait to hear what y'all say about them. Through competitions like Deep Ellum's Labor of Love and Shannon's Op. Bravo (w/ Homebrew for Heroes), we've been able to share the beer we're most proud of with people just as passionate as we are. The homebrewing community is such a rich and diverse group of people, and we can't wait to host our own homebrew competition at the New Main brewery.

Thank you all for your continued support. We enjoy every chance we get to share our beer and our passion with you all. Family, friends, acquaintances; Thank you all for helping New Main Brewing Co. take its first steps. See y'all next week!

Building a Brewery: Week 1

As promised, we will be updating all of you weekly with our plans and progress as we bring New Main Brewing Company to life. The first week has been an eye opener in various ways...

Social Media

I thought I already used social media pretty extensively, but I was on a completely different level compared to what is required of startup companies getting off the ground. I'm sure most of you who haven't already filtered our posts out of your feed are growing weary of our relentless linking and sharing and calls to action. All we can say is thank you for your continued support! I know this can come off a bit spammy, but there is literally no other way to connect with people we've never met short of taking a sabbatical from work and personally visiting each of the 6 million residents of DFW. We have to eat, so we will continue working and Facebooking, and I hope we can count on all of you sharing at least one of our posts each day to grow NMBC one social circle at a time.

Tasting Events

HUGE shoutout and thanks to Dr. Jeckyll's Beer Lab and Kool Keg for allowing us to hold our tasting events at their venues. Seriously, folks: if you don't know about these places or haven't given them a try yet, these are the lighthouses of craft beer in Arlington calling wayward craft beer fans out of the sea of the big three into the sweet embrace of great beer. All poetry aside, these places rock not only for their unwavering support of local craft and their outstanding selection, but also for the knowledgeable staff and excellent prices for delicious craft beer by the pint and/or growler. 

We were very happy to see some new faces at each of these events as we poured tasters of our spiced wit, American IPA, Belgian rye IPA, tropical stout, and porter. All of your feedback was much appreciated, so keep it coming. Tell us what you really think about the beer. We want to make the beer you want to drink!

Videos

We've also been working diligently on producing a couple videos to share our story and what sets us apart from the myriad other brewers in this great nation. There is a sneak peek of our "Brewer Shaming" video (a spoof of the "Pet Shaming" phenomenon that has swept across the internet) on our Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram feeds. Make sure you check those out, and keep an eye out for the full YouTube video coming soon. 

We are also in the process of producing a traditional introductory video that you can share with all of your friends and family that don't know about us but would like to. We have been traveling all across Arlington, Dalworthington Gardens, and Pantego to capture what this community means to us and what we hope to add to it in return. We hope you enjoy it!

T-shirts

We are immensely grateful for those of you who have contributed to our opening fundraiser by making a donation and/or buying one of our "Coming Soon, Thanks to Me" t-shirts from our booster.com campaign. We've recently added a few different color options, so if heather gray wasn't your thing, you can now choose from green, red, blue, and black as well. Hell, if you want a couple different colors to choose from, go back to booster.com/new-main-brewing-company and get you some! The campaign will be over June 19th, so make sure you're telling everyone about the great new brewery they could help build! Once the campaign ends, the shirts will be printed and shipped out, arriving by the first week of July. Those of you in the Arlington area can save $10 on shipping if you select to pick up your shirts directly from us, so let us know if you'd like to do that!

Upcoming Events

With the success of the first few events, we are dreaming big for the next few. We are still hammering out some details, but we hope to have a few parties catered by local businesses and perhaps even a few musical guests to serenade you while you try our beer for free. Our goal is to entertain you this summer while sharing who we are and what we love to do with you and your friends. We hope to see all of you and make new friends along our brewery building journey.

Last but not least, our official LLC paperwork arrived in the mail, bound in a handsome maroon leather booklet, no less. This was one of those sinking-in moments where the realization of what we're doing hit me. This whole process is very exciting, but it is NOT for the faint of heart. Before all is said and done, several people's livelihoods will depend on decisions I make daily. We are staking our entire reputation both personally and financially on our passion for this endeavor. I tend to wear my emotions on my sleeve, and I know I've already let a few "HOLY $#!+" moments affect the people close to me. Part of this process will be a personal growth for me and Amanda as we learn how to effectively and efficiently run a business, and I hope we have the opportunity to make it up to those people as we go along.

I want to express a sincere thanks to each of you playing your part in this story. We CANNOT do this without each of you, and please know that your continued support is the ONLY thing keeping us going. We hope to see y'all at the next tasting! Details soon!