Building a Brewery: Week 10

Don't worry Chicken Little, the sky isn't really falling. There have been a handful of interesting shakeups in the brewing world since last we spoke, but rest assured New Main Brewing is still committed to opening an outstanding craft brewery in the Arlington-Pantego-Dalworthington Gardens area within a year's time. Take a deep breath, crack a beer, and let's dive in.

Podcast

Our new free episode is available now, so go download it, and tell all your friends, too. This week we took a serious look at some of the brewing industry's latest shockwaves. We touched on MillerCoors buying a majority stake in Granbury's own Revolver Brewing, we were all in agreement that whoever runs the Specs Twitter account should maybe read emails all the way through before claiming Grapevine is closing its doors (it's not, don't worry), and we all giggled in nervous anticipation that Michael Peticolas may actually be affecting change with the TABC in regards to brewers' distributing rights. When thinking of what all these industry shakeups might portend for New Main, I'm reminded of Tyler Durden's ominous closing line from Fight Club, "You met me at a very strange time in my life..." Seems like he had everything under control at that point, so I'm not too worried.

Houston trip

I made the jaunt down I-45 to meet with a few friends and family members this past weekend. I got to hug my nieces and nephews, hang out with my big sister, tickle my friends' babies, and just recharge the batteries a little, ya know? For those of my other friends that I didn't see in Houston, I'm sorry I just breezed through without a word. I didn't want y'all changing plans last minute this close to the start of a new school year, and I promise I'll make it up to y'all with a Houston-only beer party soon. I was also able to sit down with a gentlemen whom many in our friend group regard as a mentor and role model to discuss New Main's business plan and direction. I gained valuable insight, I refocused certain things that I need to communicate better, and took great notes on some things that need a little more attention and thought. In the words of Tony Magee of Lagunitas, "It's good to have friends."

Location

As we continue to refine our business plan and financial projections, I'm basically going through a crash course in business management and planning. One thing that I'm slowly realizing is there are a lot of places to spend money, but some choices are wiser than others. We are still considering a few options for our brewery location, but we've also found a few new prospects that might allow us to spend previously earmarked dollars where they really count (brewing & fermenting equipment). We still don't have an official location locked down yet, but I'll let you know the second we do. I would like to host a few volunteer events before we open so that we may once more rely on our friends to help clean, decorate, build, and organize the brewing facility. Of course, there will be beer.

Upcoming Events

We have a few great local events coming up that I'm excited to share with y'all. We will be at Pantegofest on September 24th pouring samples of our beer and hopefully selling some New Main apparel. We will also be pouring beer at the Viridian for their Farmers Market and Craft Beer Experience event October 15th in Arlington. We'll release a little more information closer to each of these events, but mark your calendars now. We can't wait to meet y'all and pour you some beer!

As much fun as it is to talk about planning our brewery, our thoughts and prayers go out to all of the people affected by the recent flooding in Louisiana. We can only imagine how difficult life must be for y'all right now. If you have the means to help, please consider supporting the relief efforts of the American Red Cross, The Salvation Army, United Way, and all of the other angels helping in Louisiana's time of need. 

Building a Brewery: Week 9

Funny thing, when you're building a brewery - or starting any business for that matter - you don't really see your free time the same way anymore. Those precious hours between responsibilities and plans that used to be carefree and recharging now become guilt-soaked periods of "you should be doing xyz..." Still, the good thing about working on your passion nearly 24/7 is that it leaves you with just enough fatigue to justify actually doing nothing with some of your free time. And that is the over-thought and weakly-justified reason that I didn't write or post this update last week. :-P

Tasting at J R Bentley's

Our free tasting at J R Bentley's English Pub could not have gone any better. We were thrilled to see some of our fans again that have followed us from the beginning, and we were further encouraged by just how many of y'all were meeting New Main Brewing for the first time. Thanks to some networking on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, we were able to add our tasting party to an impressive list of events going down that Friday. 

I want to especially thank those of y'all who found out about our tasting in the Facebook group DFW Let's Talk Craft Beer, Matt Dixon of NTX Beer Week and the Dallas Brew Bus and Brian Brown's site Beer in Big D. The folks behind these sites keep running tabs on all of the craft beer industry's news and tirelessly churn out exhaustive lists of events for the inquisitive craft beer drinker. Thanks for doing what you do, folks! We're planning our next tasting at the moment, but once we have a date and location we will let y'all know through our social media.

Finally on Untappd!

After fumbling around for a few hours, I've finally uploaded our beer to our very own brewery page on Untappd. Previously, all of our homebrew was uploaded to my homebrewery page, New Main Brewing, but we've joined the craft brewing industry by adding "Company" on our new page. We have the following beers ready for you to check-in: Victory or Death Pale Ale, Gone Toobin' IPA, Runaway Scrape Porter, and Prairie Sky Saison. We are keeping with the theme that makes the most sense to our brewery staff and crew, all of us having lived all over the great state of Texas. It just makes sense to capture what we love about Texas in our beer, from its incredible history, to its natural beauty, to the ways we Texans have our fun. We will be adding the rest of our beers as we continue the brewery-opening journey, so make sure to "Like" our brewery so you can brag about having tried all of our beer before everyone else. 

Atypical DFW Podcast

We got back to beer basics last week on Atypical DFW Podcast with Certified Cicerone Ryan Martin. Talking about beer is one of my favorite things to do, second only to brewing beer. Whenever we have Ryan and other beer-centric guests on the show, I immensely enjoy the content we put out. This week was no exception as we delved into the impact of AB Imbev/Moulson-Coors/SAB Miller/Miller-Coors/blahblahblahbigbeer's recent merger on the craft beer industry. We also turn the tables on our resident Cicerone as we ask him to critique the abomination that is Smirnoff Ice's alcohol-infused sports drink. As you would imagine, colorful language and hilarity ensued.

Pantegofest, September 24th

We are proud to announce we will be participating in Pantegofest on Saturday, September 24th in beautiful Pantego, Texas. This awesome community event celebrates the diverse town-within-a-town with all kinds of festivities, featuring live music, a steak cook-off, a VIP Craft Beer sampling tent, and several inflatable attractions for the kiddos. We will be pouring free samples of our beer like we do at our tastings, and we will also be selling some awesome shirts and other apparel to help out with the Texas summer heat (that we all know carries on well into October). Mark your calendars now because this event should be a freaking blast. We are going to be brewing like crazy to make sure to have plenty for everyone to sample. See y'all there!

Brewing with Division

On Sunday, I was granted a rare and valuable opportunity to brew with the big boys at Division Brewing in Arlington, Texas. Sean Cooley invited me to share in brewday responsibilities alongside cellarman Chris Morgan as we brewed Division's English dark mild, Distant Cousin. The joys of homebrewing are amplified not only by the *MUCH* larger batch size, but also by the prospect of thousands of DFW residents enjoying the fruits of our labor soon. Brewers bring beer to the people, and it's experiences like this one that reinforce the notion that I am in fact doing what I love to do. Immense thanks to Sean, Wade, Chris, and everyone at Division for allowing me to help y'all create craft beer in Arlington. If you haven't been to Division Brewing yet, quit wasting your life and get there ASAP to discover the wide array of amazing hand-crafted beer they brew and pour just for you!

That's all for this week (or last week, if you're keeping score). As previously mentioned, we will be brewing again very soon, so keep an eye out for some action shots on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. Don't forget to log our beer on your Untappd profile as well! Cheers!

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!

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!