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.