Teaching Was An Accident
USA, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Australia, India, Equador, and Venezuela. I am blown away by how many people have gone through our immersion course from all over and started breweries. It’s all because I refused to simply break even with my little pub in Ridgway, Colorado. Some background…
In 1995 after opening my second brewery in Salida Colorado, I thought it would be fun to make a video (video cassette) on how to build breweries for cheap. I called it Frankenbrew because my philosophy was to cobble together a professional brewing set-up with used beer and dairy equipment. I think we sold about 250 of those videos, but one of the first people to reach out to me for advice based on the video was Mic Heynekamp and his wife Molly. They wanted to open a brewpub in Socorro NM, and both are super smart and came up with even more Frankenbrew ideas than I offered. They have gone on to open two breweries in Buena Vista Colorado, before moving to New Zealand to open two more. Anyway…
I began informally helping potential brewers with their projects over the next dozen years, until my wife Sandy and I moved to the tiny mountain town of Ridgway, Colorado. We started a really small brewery called Colorado Boy (named after an old mine) and we served beer and popcorn to a town with a population of 700. We broke even because Sandy and I worked and didn’t pay ourselves. That wasn’t a sustaining proposition.
So I thought, since I’ve been helping people with their projects, why not make it a formal class where they would spend a few days doing everything they would be doing in their own brewery, and we could work on their project one on one, and when they left I would continue to mentor them until they opened. In return, they had to agree to help mentor future students as well, creating our own brewing fraternity.
We started in 2009 and I charged $2,500 for the course and mentorship. (we still charge $2,500). In 99% of the cases I would save the student $50,000 off their budget in the first 30 minutes I met with them. The $2,500 was a godsend for our new brewery and eventually we became very profitable by offering pizza in addition to just beer, so the $2,500 was then used to buy cool beer toys, which we still do.
As the class grew, we expanded our teaching with the addition of Nathaniel Miller and his wife Andrea (class of ‘09) to teach in their brewery, Big Choice Brewing, which is conveniently located close to Denver. Nathaniel is an evil genius when it comes to cobbling together a brewery for even less than I can. He built his own 6 head canning machine for 15k!
My current count on breweries we have helped open stands at about 135. We still offer the course and I now also provide the full Monty where I will personally help with an entire project including going to the location to help get it started and brewing with the students on their equipment.
Yes this is I guess and infomercial, but in the past couple months I have received some questions on our course and what makes us different and how we got started.
I would really love to hear what kind of help you might need if you are a brewery in planning or a brewery just starting out. Or, what you would like me to go over in one of these articles.
Our Brewery Fraternity
12 Degree Brewing
2 Rascals
300 Suns Brewing
785 Beer Company
Absolute Threshold Brewery
Ampersand Brewing
Appalachian Grail Brewing
Barking Amadillo
Benson Brewing
Big Beach Brewing
Big Choice
Bird Boy Brewing
Black Forest Brewing
Black Tide Brewing
Bracks Brewing
Brass Ring Brewing
Briar Common Brewing
Brink Brewing
Brush Creek Brewing
Buckeye Lake Brewing
Canteen Brewery
Colorado Boy
Colorado Boy Depot
Colorado Boy Montrose
Common John Brewing
Cloudcroft Brewing
Dakota Point Brewing
Danielmark's Brewing
Dented Face Brewing
Donum Dei Brewery
Drekker Brewing Valhala
Eagle Monk Brewing
Echo Brewing
Erie Brewpub & Pizzeria
Factotem Brewing
Ffats Brewing Co
Flying Man Brewing
Freehouse Brewery
Funk Brewing
Granary Brew n Cue
Grand Rounds Brewing
Guadelupe Brewing
Haint Blue Brew
Holler Brewing Co.
Hop Soul
Humble Pint
Iechyd Da
Intersect Brewing
Intrinsic Brewing
Iron Bird Brewery
Ish Brewing
Jaya Brewing Co.
Kaskaskia Brewing
Kelsey Block
Kettle & Spoke Brewing
Kilstone Brewing
Lake City Brewing
Lincolns Beard Brewing
Little Miami Brewing
Little Thistle Brewing
Living Waters Brewing
Loop Brewing
Lore Brewing
Lost Signal Brewing
Lucky Envelope
Lucky Luke Brewing
Lucky Star Brewing
MacLeod Brewing
Macushla Brewing Co
Mama Ree's Pizza & Brewery
Maxwell Brothers Brewing
McClellan's Brewing
Fate Brewing
Metric Brewing
Modus Operendi Brewing
Moonlight Pizza
NewGrooveArtisanBrewery
Nexus Brewing
Oakbrook Brewing
Old Skool Brewing
Ouray Brewing
Padukah Beer Works
Palisade Brewing
Parker County Brewing
Parleaux Beer Lab
Perfect Plain Brewing
Poseidon Brewing
Project Halo Brewing
Red Mountain Brewing
Redgarden Brewery
Renaissance Brewing
Resonate Brewery
Revelation Ale Works
Richter Ale Works
Rickety Cricket Brewing
Rivers Edge Brewing
Rustico Cerveceria
Santa Rosa Brewing
Sasquatch Brewing
Secret Sagitarius Bier Works
Seven Tribesmen Brewing
Sidetrack Brewing Co.
Skeleton Key Brewery
Smoke Brewing
Solario Brewing
South of Shaw Beer Co.
Spigot Brewpub
Steele Street Brewing
Strange Beast Brewing
Stoik Beer Company
StudlyBrewing Company
Tennessee Beer Works
Tenn Lakes Brewing
Territorial Brewing
That Brewery
That Brewery
Third Eye Brewig
Three Twenty Brewing Co.
Two 22 Brew
Ute Pass Brewing
Utility Brewing Co.
Vault
Veteran Brothers Brewing
Vimy Brewing
Vuelta Al Mundo
Waterline Brewing CO.
Wild Parot Brewing
Westminster Brewing
Wild Rose Brewing
Wildwoods
Wiley Roots
Wort Hog Brewing
Yavasura Brewing
Yorkshire Square Brewery