Growlers n’at

After a long and tumultuous process full of miscommunications and delays, we finally have Brew Gentlemen Beer Co. growlers. And damn, do they look good.

This is one of the final steps towards fulfilling our Kickstarter rewards, and only a few small challenges remain. The largest of which is the completion of our laser-etched coasters, our plans for which fell through almost immediately after the Kickstarter campaign ended. But fear not, dear readers, for we have looked into a number of possible ways of getting these fabricated and should be able to get cracking on them within the month.

In other news, our federal licensing paperwork has been submitted to the TTB and is officially in their queue. Now, all we can do is pray that everything goes as smoothly as possible and that the government doesn’t accidentally misplace, mislabel, or incinerate our application before awarding us our license. Fingers crossed.

The Ol’ Switcheroo

Good news, everyone!

In the wake of our successful Kickstarter and a number of other small victories, we’ve decided to expand our plans a bit. Our issue, however, is that the ceilings in our current space at 800 Braddock Ave. are much too low to house a larger brewing system.

Fortunately, we’ve already found a building just down the street that is a much better fit: the old Harco Electric building, located at 514 Braddock Ave. With a spacious brewing area, a much better layout for a taproom, and more convenient parking, the Harco building is an big upgrade on a number of levels. Although our time spent at 800 Braddock Ave. was an excellent learning experience and provided a space for us to make early progress, we can’t say we’ll miss having house centipedes the size of hamsters skittering around everywhere.

We will be moving into our new space and beginning our buildout over the next few months. If everything magically falls into place and goes according to our ridiculously optimistic timeline, we should be rolling our first kegs out the door by July. Between now and then, we’ll be seeking more financing, renovating our space, getting our licensing, and installing equipment.

We’ll do some architectural drawings of our projected space over the next few weeks. For now, here’s a few pictures of the Harco building as it currently stands. We hope you all enjoy renovation photos, because we’re about to have a hell of a lot more of them.

Statistics

As an ex-math major, Matt geeked out and compiled some of the statistics from our Kickstarter campaign. As an ex-art major, I geeked out and made a ridiculous infographic out of it.

Kickstarted

Well, we did it.

As the last-minute backers streamed in, we cruised into our final number: $32,118 of our $25,000 goal.

Of course everyone who’s backed our project will receive a personal thank you, we just wanted to pre-thank everyone immediately. Although Kickstarter is only the beginning, it proved to us that we have a ready and willing community that’s here to support us right from the start.

To all of our friends, family, and everyone who knew about us and our project before this all happened: thank you for staying onboard and supporting us the whole way through. It means an immense amount to us. To the multitude of others who backed our project because they genuinely want to help us realize our vision: thank you for believing in us, in what we do, and in craft beer.

Whether you’re a future BGBC enthusiast or just like what you see, you’ve made an impact and, as Boring Pittsburgh put it, are “part of Burgh brewing history”.

So raise a pint, everyone, and toast to present accomplishment, future progress, and the wonderful people who’ve enabled both.

Or, you know, don’t, because it’s like 11am.

Thanks everyone.

Backer Shirt by Commonwealth Press

We’re rather excited to release the design for our backer shirt, created by the rather talented guys over at Commonwealth Press. It’s one of our rewards for $50+ backers, so if you’re itching to get one you can do so here.

FRONT (large, centered on chest)

BACK (small, centered below neck)

 

Goals Met, Moving Forward

Yesterday morning, with 16 days left to go, we broke our $25K goal on Kickstarter. We’re obviously rather excited about this, and we’re extremely thankful to everyone who’s helped us get here. You guys rock. With more than two weeks left, we now have the opportunity to set some stretch goals for reaching higher levels. Here’s what we have planned for the additional funds:

• $30,000 - Our first 50+ kegs. We wil be able to buy 50+ sixth-barrel kegs. All backers who have pledged over $200 will be given the opportunity to name a keg (name will be displayed on the side of the keg). We have a longstanding tradition of naming inanimate objects, and this is an opportunity to see your creativity in action. Obviously we have veto power, as we’d rather not have a keg named “[Insert Bar Name Here] Is The Absolute Worst Establishment Of All Time Oh And By The Way This Beer Sucks” showing up at [insert bar name here].
• $35,000 – Repurposed machinery bartop. We will be able to build our bar, which will feature our building’s relic of a conveyor belt (a leftover from its days as an Italian market). No, the bar will not be a conveyor belt; the non-functional machinery will inset into the bar under a glass countertop, complimenting the modern-industrial feel of our taproom.
• $40,000 – Giving back to Braddock, somehow. If we make it this far, we want to find a way to give back to the Braddock community. We’re still trying to figure out the best way to do this. We don’t want to just put it into a charity, as we’d rather put it towards something tangibly beneficial… more info to come soon.

Once again, thank you to everyone involved so far. We’re one step closer to getting this thing off the ground.

Pre-Construction Panorama

Things are going really well for us at the moment. A lot of awesome things are coming together all at once, which means that things are going to get very crazy, very quickly. We’ll give a more exhaustive update on all of that next week, but for now, here’s a little project we did.

As a thank you to everyone who’s contributed to our Kickstarter campaign thus far, we’ve put together a panorama of our facility, pre-construction. A lot of you have been asking about the space, so we figured this was a good way to let folks check it out. As you can see, it’s pretty sparse at the moment… but we’ve got a lot of space to work with, and some pretty ambitious plans.

Kickstarter Update: Backer Drawing

The Kickstarter campaign is coming along pretty well (we’re about to break $20K), but we’ve still got a few things up our sleeve. As an added bonus for our Kickstarter backers, everyone pledging $100 or more will now receive an extra reward.

Essentially, we want to make a Sgt. Pepper’s style cartoon of us and our backers for the brewery, and we want everyone that has pledged $100+ to be a part of it. It will be in the same style as our other drawings and will feature a lot of folks who have helped us with this project. Here’s the kind of thing we’re talking about, plus the Simpsons version so you can get an idea of what a cartoon version will look like:

There you have it. If you put in $100 or more, you’re automatically eligible to be a part of this drawing. I’ll ask folks for a photo of themselves when we send out our exit survey.

Day One

We woke up this morning with zero idea how the day was going to pan out.

Although I’d say that most of our days begin in a similar fashion, this one was especially nerve-racking. It seems like its been ages since we woke up, made a pot of fried rice, and just kind of stared at it for half an hour, too nervous to eat breakfast. That was fourteen hours and 10,447 dollars ago.

We’d like to offer an enormous thank you to everyone who helped us come out swinging. We’ve got 39 more days to blow this thing out of the water… and we’ve still got a lot up our sleeves. Stay posted, folks.

Kickstarter Launch

It’s been a long time coming. We’ve focused our goals and collaborated with a lot of incredibly talented friends, and we are now incredibly thrilled to present to you our Kickstarter campaign.

Asking people for money is one of the hardest things in the world. We’ve worked as hard as we could to try and create a Kickstarter that would not just be about asking you to help fund our growth; we want it to be something you can have fun watching, be interested in following, and get a lot of awesome handmade rewards from.

We’ll keep this one short… There’s a lot of updates to come.

It’s go time.