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!