Building a Brewery - July 18, 2017

Rather than try to keep up with how many weeks we've been at this, I thought I'd just slap the date on the title and get on with our progress reports. Y'all get it. You're smart. It takes a while to build a brewery. Anyways, we've been busy bees lately, and we have some cool news to share!

But first, a tale from the depths of Craigslist... 

We at the brewery find ourselves in the midst of finding cheap deals on equipment and materials to furnish our taproom build out. Daily, Amanda and I sift through postings and pictures for things like sinks, pallets, furniture, and lately small pickup trucks. 

A few years ago, Amanda and I lost some Texan points by getting rid of our two pickups in favor of more fuel efficient vehicles to make our hour-long commutes hurt a little less. Alas, though we have saved some cash in the long run with better gas mileage, we are at the mercy of our friends who own trucks when it comes to hauling large items. We finally decided enough was enough and began looking for small body pickups to help us search for taproom loot in DFW.

We went through countless posts and contacted about 5-10 sellers per day, all last week. We scheduled times to come look at the trucks and test drive them any spare moment we had. And you know what we found out? People LIE on the internet! I know right?! Seriously, if I have to read one more description of "a pretty good little truck," I'm going to lose my pretty good little mind.

Things like claiming it has 120,000 miles on the odometer, only to drive out to the middle of East Texas to discover it has 190,000 miles. Oh, and the ceiling is sagging so much that there are two perfect oil slicks where it has touched the driver's and passenger's heads for who knows how long. And also every glass surface is cracked or tarnished. And also rust. And a check engine light, even though the place selling the truck IS ATTACHED TO A MECHANIC'S GARAGE. And that wasn't even the cheapest one we looked at!

To be fair, that was just one of the 10 vehicles we test drove, but it was pretty damn disgraceful compared to the general sunshine pumping going on in the CL post. By and large, the biggest transgression from most sellers on Craigslist was taking photos of their trucks in such a way as to hide windshield cracks, claiming the interior was "clean" when there was literally an apple and candy wrappers strewn about, and for some reason, a half-empty (half-full, whatever) bottle of water in each of the beds of these trucks. We began to think it was all a big prank, and Ashton Kutcher was around the corner waiting to tell us we got Punk'd, bro.

We finally found a great deal from a guy in Garland where the interior hadn't been straight-up destroyed, the miles were reported accurately, and the vehicle was in overall pretty good shape. Long story longer, we bought the truck and drove it back to Pantego for use in official brewery building business. Folks, say hello to New Main Brewing's newest team member...

Bob Barley, the New Main Brewery Truck

Aside from our North-Texas-trotting escapades, we managed to accomplish a few other major milestones. We filed for and received our Sales and Use Tax permit (hold the thunderous applause until the end, please). We also busted our humps to gather all relevant information to submit our Special Use Permit to the Town of Pantego in order to open as a taproom. This one was actually a big deal, folks, and it wasn't just the New Main crew that worked hard to make it happen. 

I want to give a HUGE shout out to Larissa at The Runner Shop in Pantego for helping us secure our joint parking agreement, one of the most important facets of our SUP application. Thanks to her extremely prompt responses and kindness, we will be one of very few breweries in DFW with adequate parking that doesn't make you walk several miles to get to the air conditioning! The Runner has not only some of our favorite running and athletic gear, but also a stable of amazing people ready to help you get where you want to go. Make sure you show them some love, because there's a good chance we would've missed a narrow window to get open this year without them!

More updates on the way, and details for our first work party should come out this week. Spoiler alert, we're resurfacing our deck in the beer garden area. We'll post later this week on our Facebook page with details. Until then, stay cool. Cheers!

Happy Independence Day!

We're starting to get down to business fixing up the building. We have a lot of irons in the fire at the moment with TABC licensing, Indiegogo order fulfillment, our SUP submittal for the Town of Pantego, business plan re-re-re-re-re-re-visions, and of course starting to acquire some equipment and materials to turn our space into New Main Brewing Company.

First things first, you all are being incredibly patient with us on the Indiegogo order fulfillment, and we sincerely appreciate it. We apologize that it's taking so long to get these items out to all of you, but we are working our hardest to get the items made, printed, and ready for shipping. We are waiting on one more vendor to get our glasses, tin tackers, and stickers to us before we can start shipping everything out. 

We are incredibly happy with the items we've ordered so far, so we want to give a huge shout out to Nice Dudes Servicing Craft in Denton and Cornerstone Impressions in Fort Worth. Both of these businesses gave us prompt service, outstanding product quality, and you can bet we'll be using them again. We think you should too!

Amanda has been working hard to get our licensing process underway, and we're proud to announce that our 60-day notice has been put up at our location! We are also starting our paperwork for our brewpub licenses, both with the State and the Feds because we know it takes a long time. By the time we're ready to brew our first batch of our own beer (after we start up serving our favorites from our friends in the DFW craft scene), hopefully we should have all the licensing and paperwork in place.

We're also submitting our plans and applications to the Town of Pantego, who have been a great bunch of folks to work with so far. We've met with the Town Manager and Development Director as well as the Assistant Fire Chief a few times so that they know who we are and what we want to bring to Pantego. Even though our plan shifted from the first time we met, they have been very helpful in letting us know the process to get our plans before the Planning and Zoning commission as well as the Town Council. We will keep all of you updated on our progress at Town Hall, including ways for you to help make your voice heard when it comes time to show your support of New Main.

This week, we gathered our team to help us secure some equipment that we need. We have been scouring used equipment sites and Craigslist to find some cost-effective cold rooms to house the beverages we plan to serve. We located an excellent prospect in Burleson, and after verifying that the cooler was in good working order, we had ourselves a deal. 

Mega-huge shouts out to Rohde and Jason for stepping up to help us dismantle, pack, and unload the cooler panels and parts at the brewery. I also want to thank William Enox of Crossroads Station Storage for selling us the cold room, helping us disconnect and load the pieces, and of course renting us the truck we needed to haul it all. If y'all need storage or U-Haul trucks in the Crossroads/Burleson area, William is your guy. Next step is to call in some friends who speak fluent HVAC to help us puzzle-piece everything back together into a working cold room.

The next items we will need to get working on will be some painting and trim work inside the building as well as some TLC on the outside of the facility. We're talking fence, deck, signage, doors, and whatever else pops up on the way to getting open. We also need to get back to brewing so we can have some New Main beer to share with our volunteers. Once we have a batch or two ready to drink, we'll set up a Saturday or two for y'all to help us swing some hammers. In the mean time, we're also working with a contractor to install a fire suppression system inside the building. These are busy times indeed. Cheers!