Building a Brewery: Week 8

FREE BEER tasting at J R Bentley's English Pub

As you may have heard, we are having a free beer tasting at J R Bentley's in beautiful Downtown Arlington this Friday, July 29th starting at 7PM. Bentley's is one of our favorite local pubs for craft beer, great food, and bar games. We always have a great time there, and this Friday will be no exception!

Come in Friday evening and grab one of Bentley's awesome appetizers (the fresh cut pub chips are our favorite), a hearty dinner (some of the best burgers around), or choose from one of the many fine Texas craft beers on their draft wall from our brewing brothers and sisters. Here's their full menu. Any of these purchases will grant you a free tasting card with 4 spaces on it. You can sample each of our beers, or if you're just crazy about a certain style, feel free to use your whole card on any beer! You can sample from any of our four offerings:

Pale Ale

35 IBU   5.5% ABV

A light and pleasant bready malt backbone allows the Centennial hops flavor and aroma to shine through in our American Pale Ale. This beer is an excellent companion for hikes, cookouts, or any occasion where you'd reach for flavor and drinkability. A classic American favorite.

IPA

70 IBU   6.3% ABV

A touch darker, sweeter, and more exotic than the Pale Ale, this full bodied American IPA boasts a rich body to support massive amounts of citrus, pine, and tropical fruit from American hops. This is one beer you'll want to savor with your eyes as well as your mouth!

Saison

32 IBU   6.1% ABV

Sir Isaac Newton once said, "Nature is pleased with simplicity." Apple guy sure got this one right! Our gold-medal-winning Saison showcases the excellent yeast characteristics one expects from this style while balancing a simple malt bill against bright citrus hop flavor and aroma.

Porter

33 IBU   6.3% ABV

New Main Brewing Co. firmly believes there is no light without the dark. This award-winning porter offers a sumptuous tan head, ruby colored highlights in your glass, a pleasant chocolate and roasty aroma, and an enticingly dry finish beckoning your next sip.

Bentley's is a Pokestop!

If free beer wasn't enough to entice you, J R Bentley's is also a Pokestop, for those of y'all who gotta catch 'em all. I'll even throw a few lures out to help y'all find some rare Pokemanz while you're enjoying our beer. Yes, we too have fallen pray to the PoGo craze, but in all fairness, what better way to work off our craft beer calories than to walk a few miles and tell folks about our brewery?

We will also have a few extra New Main Brewing t-shirts for sale ($25 each), some NMBC stickers, and possibly some other swag. If you're thinking about coming alone, go grab a friends, relatives, coworkers, heck, even your new best friend you found while playing Pokemon Go, and get your butts to J R Bentley's!

Building a Brewery: Week 6&7

"Hey David, you didn't post a blog last week. Are you dying?"

No, I've just been busier than a couple of rabbits on their honeymoon lately. Between crazy projects and deadlines at work and celebrating Mrs. New Main's new job, we've managed to push the brewery plans forward inch by inch. Here are some highlights:

Podcast

We at Atypical DFW Podcast got the chance to sit down with our friend Jourdan of Beardos Beard Oil and Balm to talk about some exciting new product lines he's coming out with. He's also recently partnered up with Mudvayne and Audiotopsy's guitarist Greg Tribbet to work on a new venture called Third Eye Visions offering skin care, hair care, and other fine personal care products. Jordan is a huge fan of our pineapple stout, so we cracked a few and talked about everything they have in store in the coming months.  Their passion for making an excellent product is contagious! Check these guys out if you haven't already. They'll be at the Viridian Farmers Market July 23 and Jourdan will be MCing the first annual Bearded Lady Beard Contest in Denton on August 13 behind the East Side Denton bar.

Business Stuff

We're working on setting up our accounting, legal, and insurance relationships for New Main. Not many of y'all give a hoot about that, but it's a big step for us to establish the company. This is our dream, and we're not half-assing it. If it's taking a while, it's only because we want to enter into this thing with as few surprises as possible. Please be patient while we work out all of the behind the scenes stuff, and we'll reward you with beer. Promise.

T-shirt Selfies

We've received a bunch of great photos of y'all with your new shirts, but we also have a bunch of folks that chose to have their shirts sent to us that haven't received them yet. In the interest of a level playing field, we'll postpone selecting our VIP membership winner until everyone receives their shirts. Sorry for the hiccup, but to be fair we're better known for our beer than our selfie contests.

Brewers Guild Meeting

We had a great time at Community Beer Company in Dallas this week for our monthly Texas Craft Brewers Guild meeting. Slow Bone BBQ was provided by one of the members, Community poured beer for everyone, and we brought up a couple growlers of the Porter and Saison to share with our future peers. Hang outs like guild meetings are good for the soul, especially when all I've been doing lately is paperwork and business stuff. That's all important, but these meetings help to remind us why we're doing this in the first place. Beer is about people, plain and simple. We had great chats with folks from Noble Rey, Martin House, Oak Highlands, Humperdinks, Community, some suppliers, and an awesome "beer lawyer" from our neck of the woods (any chance to talk about the glory that is H-E-B should be seized). The genuine-ness of each of these people is reassuring at the least and inspiring at the most.

Competitions

We received word from Martin House that the first round of judging for the Riverside Shootout that Kyle and I entered just before announcing our brewery plans should be complete. While we don't know whether our two beers are moving on or not, the MH guys said winners will be announced the early part of August. On another note, we won't be entering Deep Ellum's Labor of Love competition this year. It's been a ton of fun in the past, but we don't have the time to invest in preparing for the competition and pouring event this year. Good luck to all of you planning on competing!

Stay cool, be excellent to each other, and for those of y'all chasing down Pokemon, be safe and have fun. Hopefully we'll see you amazing people at our next tasting events!

Building a Brewery: Week 5

Our New Main Brewing T-shirts are pretty much all shipped now. We still have a few of y'all's shirts that chose to send them to us, so if you haven't received yours yet, please give us a call or email at newmainbrewing@gmail.com. We want y'all to have your awesome shirts ASAP! Don't forget to keep sending in your awesome, funny, cute, outrageous photos sporting your New Main Brewing shirt for your chance at a free year of VIP club membership! Deadline is July 15th!

Brew Sessions

Kyle and I have been busy brewing up more beer for future tasting events. We've slightly tweaked our Pale Ale and IPA recipes based on feedback we received at some of our other tasting events, so hopefully we are getting nice and dialed in on our flavor profiles. Those should be ready in a few weeks. Both of our award winning recipes (Saison and Porter) are carbonated and ready now. We should have a nice selection available at our next tastings.

Summer Dart League

Some of y'all may have heard, Amanda and I play on the New Main Brewers team for the MetroPlex Dart Association Summer League. We're no professionals or anything; the summer league is by and large a just-for-fun tournament. Each week teams visit each other's "home" bars and play games of individual 501, team 801, and doubles cricket, all while enjoying a beer or three at each new location. Our next few games will be "home" at Dr. Jeckyll's Beer Lab in Pantego, so y'all should stop by on Tuesday nights and cheer us on. If you wear your New Main Brewing t-shirts, I just might buy you a beer! Also, if any of y'all would like to join our team, feel free to email and let us know. We could always use a few extra players!

New Fundraisers/Merchandise

We are brainstorming some design ideas for more t-shirts, pint glasses, and growlers to help us reach our funding goals. We have a few we like, so we may be rolling them out very soon. We'd love to hear any ideas you all have for themes, memes, and inbetweens to put on these items, so leave us some comments, message us on Facebook, call us at 682-990-BEER, or tweet at us @thenewmainbrew. We may even have another free year of VIP if we decide to use your idea!

Upcoming Tastings

We don't have anything on the schedule yet, but we are looking to branch out to some new tasting locations. We will have our Porter, Saison, Pale Ale, and Wit at these events. We wanted to have some of the lighter fare available for the hottest Texas summer months, but you can count on us having some tropical stout, barrel aged stout, and a few other little special offerings once the fall months are upon us. 

Independence Day Shenanigans

We hope you all had a great and safe 4th! We were busy all weekend doing "market research" poolside with a few of our favorite local brewing brothers' and sisters' handiwork. We also stopped by Division Brewing Sunday night to catch the Downtown Arlington fireworks show and try out their latest special offerings of Cosmic Wah, Cherry Smack, and The Squeeze. We also got some concrete progress on our soon-to-be-released video featuring yours truly. Special thanks to Jason Tyree for producing and putting up with me while putting the video together!

Atypical DFW Podcast AT DIVISION!!!

Speaking of Mr. Tyree, we will be podcasting tonight from Division Brewing in Arlington for an awesome episode with our favorite brewers! Word on the street is we will also be filming! Anyone in the area needs to cancel all of their plans and come to Division Brewing tonight for a pint or two! It's been a minute since we've had them on the show, so we've got a lot of catching up to do. Should be a great time!

Thanks for stopping by, and keep checking us out week by week for our updates. Cheers!