Here’s a general business tip to anyone looking to start a mediocre brewery in 2014: if the initial funding for your shitty project involves shaking an alms cup on the internet, your beers will probably taste like afterbirth. Consumers are dumb, beer drinkers are even dumber. Dipshits regularly pay hundreds of dollars for bottles of beer that have marginally worse analogs available off the shelf. Remember when I reviewed fucking Depuration? that should be proof enough that the craft beer world is full of cockstains without mountains of disposable income.
One thing about beer nerds though, they have excellently calibrated bullshit detectors. You may beguile them into paying $250.00 for a Reserve Society that promises 2 glasses and a plaque, but even the sloppiest mantits will not pony up money FOR BEER THAT DOESN’T EVEN FUCKING EXIST. Recently there have been ropes and ropes of precum turned out by “brewers” who promise eternal anal massages for pennies on the dollar and forthcoming ambrosial treats. If you saw one of these people on the street they would look like this:
Future master brewer at work
Most of these smegma projects are two assholes with a 10 gal setup who have drank enough of their own shitty red ales to decide that they are now professional brewers. Wanking it in a garage every other Sunday doesn’t make you a professional, no one sees me putting up a Kickstarter to fund my Daredorm account. Most of the time the Kickstarter makes oblique promises that range from “one wish” to “potentially nothing.” Let’s say you had a raging hard cock to make sure Oregon City got some janky irish ales, DON’T YOU FECKING WORRY:
That’s right, for $500, you can DESIGN A BEER THAT MAY LIVE ON FOREVER (if all the permits and equipment and tap licenses and zoning permits and municipal compliance papers and merchandising rights are locked down: FOREVER.) Chances are, if you are letting random fucking people stumble in and start designing recipes, your shit is likely going to make Short’s Brewing look like a purist domain.
How about this, do you have fucking Alzheimers? Are you totally incapable of finding a bottle opener but need to get drunk to forget about that one night in Cinncinnati? OH SHIT AN APPLBEES MUG WITH AN OPENER BUILT INTO IT:
Next time when you wanna sip Framboos out of a clunky shitty plastic mug, YOU WONT NEED TO FIND ANYTHING TO GET THE CORK OU- oh. Shit. This technically isn’t from brewers, but I am sure it will make any virgin/Steelers fan happy.
If you donate $10,000 to my horrible anuswater startup you will receive one baby Pangolin.
Perhaps you want to see Colorado’s struggling beer scene finally get the legs that it so desperately needs. Maybe you read Jurassic Park one too many times and now draw erotic dinosaur fan fiction. Well these guys at Fossil Brewing have you covered:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1368342567/fossil-brewing-company?ref=live
If you donate $1,000.00 to them you get…TO NAME THEIR FERMENTER. I am not shitting you up the dick, you will ascend to a God-like level and be able to his the ultimate apotheosis in naming a huge aluminum cylinder. The woman that works at Chik-Fil-A has 5 dildos, each with a different name. For way less money you can name her next marital aid and feel good about helping people under the poverty line.
I was just gonna waste hundred of dollars on heroin this year but then I saw this dude IS GONNA MAKE TRADITIONAL BROWN ALES HOLY FUCK
Maybe you didn’t read about it in the news but Phoenix is in a state of complete national emergency THERE IS NOWHERE TO PURCHASE A QUALITY CZECH LAGER. Co-eds from Tempe have been bussing in and sucking cocks just to land precious bottles of that rare libation. Have no fear, these guys are here to save the fucking day:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1359827264/dubina-brewing-co?ref=search
You may be thinking “wait, what qualifies these guys to take upwards of a G from me?” Uh well, a little something called “AWARDS” maybe youve heard of them? Unnamed awards from PLACES. Also, “[the brewer] showed up to a local Oktoberfest with a cinnamon sourdough concoction. His kegs were dry long before those of the local breweries surrounding him. People asked “Sourdough and cinnamon? Why?” His answer was simple: “Because I can.” It is with this tenacious “Because I can.” mentality that he approaches each and every brew.” BECAUSE IT IS ARIZONA SO FUCK YOU.
WAIT FUCK HOW MANY LOGO PINT GLASSES FOR YOUR IMAGINARY COMPANY DO I GET HANG ON I NEED TO SEE IF I CAN LIQUIDATE MY 401K REALLY QUICK
In summation, if you don’t have a legitimate business plan, real backers, financial acumen, a tested product, a consumer base that actually gives a fuck, unique beers that don’t rely on shitty adjuncts, and a proven track record beyond praise from your alcoholic/child molester uncle: you probably shouldn’t be opening a brewery. Get back to selling oranges by the freeway and dreaming of your TRIPEL ORANGE CREAM DREAMSICLE WITBIER AGED IN GRAND MARNIER BARRELS AND HONDURAN TEARS.
Post your favorite shitty kickstarter in the comments section.
dontdrinkbeer 
http://www.trevolta.com/travels/From-Kentucky-to-Belgium-My-Brewery-8034
He wants us to pay not for his brewery, but for his trip to Belgium to learn about lambic that he is then going to brew at his brewery (for which he will probably solicit even more donations).
Just incredibly amateurish and pathetic, not to mention got nowhere close to the goal.
Haha wait until this good ol boy sees what a shithole Brussels (and the whole Islamic State of Belgium) is and he probably won’t want to stay more than two days there.
Great post! The guy says he needs to go to Belgium because all the old-time lambic guys will be dying soon and he needs to preserve their techniques. What a joke. I guess he sees himself as the Alan Lomax of lambicology. By the way, anyone can pay 8 Euro and tour Cantillon, where you are more likely than not to see Van- Roy Cantillon family members running around. So much for his claim of meeting important people.
Just total amateur hour, not to mention they got nowhere close to their stated goal.
Some of my favorites as of late:
https://crowdbrewed.com/rewards/campaigns/zephyr-brewing-company/
If the beer quality is anything like the production value of their video they should just stop now. Also, one of the “awards” is “a shout-out on our Facebook page as a thank you for the support!” Fucking sweet!
“We need a gimmick…. I am thinking… STEAMPUNK! No one has used that one yet! If we raid the costume store with the little bit of money we have we can make a rad video and beg for more money!” These people also started a Kickstarter to finance a coolship. How about you open a brewery and craft a decent beer before you buy a coolship. Just a thought.
No explanation needed. Just watch the video.
Maybe they should put up the blond hooker for sale to fund the brewery.
So, do tell, sanitation controls of the ferment chamber and maintaining temperatures under 100 degrees in your concrete piss barn, and I’ll gladly donate nothing . absolutely nothing.
This has all the markings of the manic phase of a rich guy’s bipolar second wife:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2121869318/hoppy-girl-brewing-a-nano-brewery-and-wine-cafe?ref=discovery
She wanted it to be a brewpub/wine bar/martini bar/bakery/local historical center. What? How the hell are you going to do all that? Just buy a Chuck E Cheese and call it a day.
Her contribution levels are pretty good. If you donate $1, you get:
“Your name on the Plaque of Donors that helped us get started. Receive FREE hugs for life.” Thanks but no thanks.
For the top contributor who gives $4,495 (!) the owner will not only etch your name into the concrete (!) bar, but will also fly you into town, put you up in a local hotel for 2 nights, and give you a free hand-crafted “beer giraffe” (????).
“All Aboard…the Hoppy Girl Excursion Tour where your dreams can become a reality and where the eagles soar above the beautiful Mississippi River.”
You are high on mescaline.
One of the head brewers?
As someone who just left their job sacrificing their brewer integrity to help his childhood friend ascend beyond mediocrity. I applaud you sir, in Georgia we’ve seen about 30 new breweries open up in the past year. Maybe 3 or 4 of them actually understand what good beer is. Pray for us and our awful “5% session ales,” our diacetyl bombed red ales, and our under-hopped IPAs. I long for the day that someone makes a local ‘intentionally’ sour complex ale.
Right on! Way before there was even an Internet, let alone Kickstarter, I was conned into paying a dollar for an empty bottle just to show interest in having a small local brewery open up in town. What the hell was I thinking? So now thirty years later I still have that bottle, and where’s that small local brewery so many of us shelled out free money for? Oh yeah, here it is: http://www.capital-brewery.com/TheBrewery/HistoryAndAwards.aspx
Congratulations for having entirely missed the point!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1977975038/rrecklesstown-brewing-building-a-brewery-on-a-farm?ref=live
Recklesstown, where Ned Beatty goes to squeal like a pig!
Who needs quality beer when you can do make some Inland Empire quality shake-and-bake beer in a matter of a day!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659815335/the-bootlegger-bottle-expedite-your-creativity
Shit, I think even San Quentin Pruno takes longer than this, but hey, maybe they got the time to wait for it.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/junelakebrewing/june-lake-brewing-build-a-brewery-in-june-lake-cal?ref=live
Sure, your small mountain town with a population in the 600’s needs some brewing representation even though Mammoth Brewing is about 15 miles away! Bitching, Awesome-sauce, Bodacious!
Fuck your lame condescending and grouping of kick start small start breweries into one……..I have a majority of the things you mention at the end tell me who the hell backs a brewery……I brew and have drank more beer in my life than your staff most and am struggling just like the next man …….while funny who the fuck are to judge small upstarts and generalize go fuck yourself lame excuse for a writer and most Likly a shitty brewer and while I am at it fuck this craft brewers who think they are demigods ie stone lag Firestone port etc etc take some to cherish and blow smoke up your ass …….fuck this whole culture drunk my beer In piece you fucking modern day American scum
What the fuck did you just fucking say, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Sierra Nevada Beercamp, and I’ve been involved in numerous spontaneous fermented #whalez and I have over 300 confirmed bottles of BVDL. I am trained in gypsy brewing and I’m the top yeast proprigator in the entire US homebrew society. You are nothing to me but just another marco drinking beer server. I will wipe your palate the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before outside of California, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of brewmasters and distribotors across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out your ability to by any Pliny. You’re fucking dry, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can drink your shelf turd whales, and that’s just with one kidney. Not only am I extensively trained in fancy humblebragging, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the Bourbon County variants and I will use it to its full extent to make you mirin’, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking banned from BA, kiddo.
Sentence structure, please. Unfortunately, it is obvious you most likely brew as well as you write. “I brew and have drank more beer in my life than your staff and I am struggling like the next man” So, you’re an alcoholic writing this from the public library which you use to shelter you from the cold? Not knocking either of those, as I have homeless and alcoholic friends (which are very different things) but neither have any business starting a brewery-nor do you. Also, I really hope the person who replied is joking. If not, fuck that guy. But neither of you should be starting breweries.
Suddenly everyone who’s been told their homebrew tastes good thinks they’re qualified to brew commercially. No wonder that so many of the ‘new’ beers coming out these days are marginal at best and heinously bad at worst.
Agree that neither of the posters seem that they should be starting breweries. Then again, probably half of the new breweries out there should never have started up. There’s a lot of good beer out there nowadays…but there’s probably the same ratio of shit beer as there ever was…probably more than there ever was.
Hey dawg, I heard you like funding homebrewers to brew IPAs. So I gave you a brewery that will allow homebrewers to brew IPAs at a brewery to see if they want to start up another brewery.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kitcheninc/the-brewery-incubator-co-working-brewery-collabora?ref=live
Gypsy, contract, and homebrewers are going to give each other SARS here.
This place actually puts out great beer. There are some guys who really know what they’re doing and great breweries will be established because of this place. Oh sorry, you don’t like what I said? Time for a brainless rant banning me from BA.
L.A. River Brewing, Because who doesn’t picture themselves drinking a cold one while chilling next to this concrete, easy access, old furniture/body dump site? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larbc/la-river-brewing-company
Buuuuhhhhhh these guys won’t be opening it… http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1974262029/council-brewing-co?ref=banner
Hold on….I can sign the fermenter…and at another level I can get cool hat and a second hat! These guys seem legit….
http://alesyndicate.com/news/detail/more-beer-for-chicago
For another $500 you can get my exclusive release called Acorn Penis – 18% abv and pH 1.1, aged in George Dickel barrels with 20lbs of durian. Estimated release date of 2032.
I am only $1000 away from my goal of $1020.
My flagship beers will be:
Blue Waffle – a blueberry sour fermented with 100% Candida albicans and Lactobacillus.
Rainbow in the Dark – a tribute to Ronnie James Dio/Lost Abbey collaboration, black sour aged with skittles.
Peat – a smoked wee heavy, not served in a bottle, but in the beer pouch of a mummified bog man, spontaneously fermented behind a Taco Bell in Chino.
Feckeration – an amber ale.
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This is worse than a Kickstarter to open the next great nanobrewery. This guy doesn’t even hide the fact that he’s going to use the money he raises to buy himself a bunch of shiny new homebrewing gear. But, for $28 you get a T-Shirt with his name on it and TWO bottles of his homebrew.
https://www.booster.com/lymanbrewing
Failed kickstarter here
That video is awful, the beer is awful (I’ve tried it), and that name is awful.
They tried TWO kickstarters and failed them both. Unfortunately they will still be opening in a few months.
Wait…the irony here is that you feel that since you sorta know the English language that you have something noteworthy to blog about? Your writing is horrendous and not very coherent. You have some good points about any schmo who has brewed a few batches thinks they can open a brewery, but it applies to any other business in the world. Someone painted a good picture so they are suddenly an artist? Someone cooks a good meal and suddenly they are worthy to open a restaurant? Someone can put words down on the internet and they suddenly think they are a legit writer?
What the fuck did you just fucking say, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Sierra Nevada Beercamp, and I’ve been involved in numerous spontaneous fermented #whalez and I have over 300 confirmed bottles of BVDL. I am trained in gypsy brewing and I’m the top yeast proprigator in the entire US homebrew society. You are nothing to me but just another marco drinking beer server. I will wipe your palate the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before outside of California, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of brewmasters and distribotors across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out your ability to by any Pliny. You’re fucking dry, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can drink your shelf turd whales, and that’s just with one kidney. Not only am I extensively trained in fancy humblebragging, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the Bourbon County variants and I will use it to its full extent to make you mirin’, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking banned from BA, kiddo.
Gosh darn your large words…. and your small difficult words! How do they work?!
Whoa…who the heck cares what people want to do with their money?! If they want to throw it in a toilet and flush it that’s their business, not yours. Why don’t you check out a little brewery called Arizona Wilderness who was able to open their doors through Kickstarter and their beers are AMAZING!!! I think your judgment is harsh when you 1.) Likely haven’t started a brewery or, small business 2.) If #1 isn’t true then you know how hard it is to find the kind of financial backing through investors and banks. Even currently open breweries that are trying to do expansions who show triple digit growth have a hard time getting money to find their expansion.
Why would you vilify Kickstarter when it wouldn’t exist without people willing to support it? If the people putting their projects don’t have their shit together then they don’t hit their goal. People are smart enough to look to see who’s put effort forth and those are the people they give money to. Sorry, I just don’tbagree with your stance or with the venomous way you’ve chosen to express your opinion. Do whatever you want with your blog it’s yours to consist you want with but, if all of your posts are this angry and drop as many eff bombs, that is called a shtick…it’s your gimmick to get readers. And, you’ve garnered a lot of attention with this post so congratulations, it works.
I work in this industry…and specifically AZ. There are a few projects that are going through Kickstarter that I’m excited to see go through because they’ve done their homework and I’ve tried their beer.
I’ll stick to my original point which is who cares where people spend their money…and who cares about people putting their projects on Kickstarter…I don’t see this as a way to ruin Craft Beer…I see it as a way to make it better. And besides, no brewery is funded 100% by their Kickstarter campaign…it’s merely a start, hence the name, “Kickstarter.”
You do realize that all kickstarter projects can be described this way. Who cares where they get funding? If the product or business model sucks, they will ultimately fail. Just like other products, their have been failures and success with brewery funding via kickstarter. https://www.google.com/search?q=kickstarter+brewery+success&oq=kickstarter&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j5j69i59j0&client=tablet-android-google&sourceid=chrome-mobile&espv=1&ie=UTF-8
Totes want to fund a DDB Kickstarter for some of dat Pediobear.
I sent a message to the Dubina guy asking him about how he was going to keep his sourdough ale from cross contaminating his Czech style pilsner. His answer was there is no sourdough yeast in his pilsner recipe. He certainly didn’t have any idea what cross contamination is or what I was talking about. I then suggested he should go to brewing school to learn about brewing before screwing up his business. He stated he has been homebrewing for a year and knew what he was doing. Scary and I cant believe he got funded.
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Update: I am so close to my goal of $1020, with a $767.82 already funded. Come on, keep that $ coming people, lets make this happen. When this goes down I am going to tear a new anus in the brewing world. I am going to take beer inacessability to a new level. I plan to name my beers with unnecessarily long meaningless names that will become silly acronyms on the trade boards. Soon when you try to trade my Blood Orange on Blueberries in Every Sip for a Not of this Hearth in New Guinea, you will be forced to type ISO/ BOoBieS FT/ NotHiNG. Or maybe I will just flat out label beers with symbols that don’t exist on a keyboard. I will do single case releases in New Caledonia or Inner Mongolia to make sure even fewer can taste the sweet perfection. I will escalate the East Coast – West Coast Hop Rivalry to violent new levels. I warn alpha acids will be shed in the streetz. Finally, I will crown myself emperor of the Inland. My first act will be to rename the city of Chino to the translation of Mexico in Chinese, because it just makes more sense.
Finally, a business plan we can all get behind.
Fuck it…….just run an unlicensed brewery out of your house. Show me a single case where anyone has been popped! No need for a Kickstarter. 8 dollar growler fills all day long. Why waste your money, or anyone else’s, trying to start a nano.
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Who the fuck are you to criticize a young mans dream. Nice article by the way.!!!!!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1978687546/common-ground-brewing-beer-brewing-at-its-finest-0/description
The second Kickstarter attempt for these fellas. Some real gems here. Basically, they want you to pay them, not to buy equipment, buy to literally teach them how to brew.
hahaah
It’s so sad this Brewer who copied your videos didn’t reach his funding goals.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/838886018/standing-pitch-brewing-company?ref=discovery