I think that I can really compete with some of the smaller microbreweries even at the homebrew stage I am at. I have entered a few of my beers into local competitions and have won a few awards. A couple of years ago my Porter took 2nd place in that category at the NYS Fair. I taste my beers against what is out in the craft market and I think my beers are close or better than some of those beers. Whenever I brew a batch I typically give half of it away looking for opinions. Now it’s true that this beer goes to most of my friends, but I stress to them that I want their honest opinions, if they don’t like it I want to know why so I can become a better brewer. So far I haven’t had any complaints, unless it was a matter of preference. For example, my Hot Chili Beer was very hot, so to some people it was too hot and they didn’t care for it. Based on that I think that I am just about there when it comes to my recipes, I’m think they will take some more refining and fine tuning but for the most part they are pretty damn good if I do say so myself.
So with that being said why am I not jumping into the brewing world on a small entry-level nanobrewery? The answer is education. Everything I have ever done in my life I have analyzed and learned as much as possible about before I made a decision to pursue it. I hate going at things half-assed. So my biggest problem is I lack the knowledge to go from where I am now to scaling up to a small professional brewery. I just don’t know how it is done, I don’t know how they scale up the recipes, I don’t know how to run the equipment needed for larger batches, I just plain don’t know.
Because I am employed full-time and have a now expanding family I can’t just pull up stakes and enroll in UC Davis’ Master Brewer Program for six months or whatever it is. But I can take a six month brewer’s course with the American Brewer’s Guild in Intensive Brewing Science & Engineering. It is a distance course that will require a lot of reading and studying followed up with a week of hands-on experience in a working brewery. This I can definitely swing and definitely want to do, but here’s the catch. The two classes for 2013 are full and the spring class of 2014 is full, so right now I would have to wait until June 16th, 2014 to start if I get accepted. The other catch and it’s a big catch is it is $7250 for the class.
So with providing for my family and another baby on the way I am pretty financially tied down for the next few years. So here is where things could get interesting, surfing the internet about starting up breweries and brewery education I stumbled onto Indiegogo.com. Indiegogo is a funding platform where you promote yourself and people can donate to your cause. It is used for the a variety of things from small business startups to education to some of the best causes (I think) raising money for people who need it the most (i.e. people struggling with medical bills for illness, memorial donations, medical research etc.).
I am tossing around starting a campaign to possibly fund my brewing education. So here is where the big MAYBE from the start of this post comes in. I hate asking people for money, I hate owing anyone anything. I feel very uncomfortable creating a campaign for my own personal benefit when there seem to be so many other more worthy causes out there. Also, one of the things in creating a campaign is to give the donors a “gift” for their donations. Some of the breweries are offering things like personal thanks to pint glasses to placing the donor’s name on the wall at the subsequent brewery. So I look at that and I don’t have much to offer a potential donor other than my heartfelt thanks and maybe some good discussion about beer and brewing. So, I feel foolish saying “give me money and I’ll give you a giant thank you note”.
I mean other people do it all the time, that is why Indiegogo is there and so popular. Maybe I just have to suck it up, get over my own pride and risk it, who knows maybe some investor is looking to help someone like me out just to do it right? Well, one can hope but I’m still on the fence about the whole thing.
What do you think? Do you think I am being selfish/foolish in trying to do this or should I give it a shot to get the first steps to Stubborn Bull Brewing Co. off the ground?
