THERE ARE THREE important reasons why you would want to read this book:

1. You have a great idea for a craft beer bar, cidery, distillery and/or microbrewery.
2. You have great passion for beer in general and all things beer related.
3. You want a solid lesson about the tricky process of successfully starting a business – any business.

D.C. Reeves is an interesting fellow. He has incredible organizational skills. At age 31, he became chief of staff for a major business player in the Florida economy. At 32, while managing the affairs of his very busy boss, D.C. planned and executed his own business startup, Perfect Plain Brewing Company, one of the most successful young microbreweries in the state of Florida. Perfect Plain stays packed with avid beer aficionados. He balanced the achievement of all his business success with taking care of a delightful young daughter, Caroline.

Clearly, then, D.C. Reeves is organized, he is well rounded, and he thoroughly understands both the microbrewery industry and the business side of corporate success, including both large and small corporations. That makes him a good man to listen to. The fact that D.C. is a former journalist, a sports writer for 10 years, is a bonus. It makes this book a fascinating read.

Enough about D.C.'s credentials; let's talk about the book. This book was written to bridge a gap. On one side we have a superb beer technician with a burning idea about a microbrewery, and on the other side we have the box of knowledge and skills requisite to business success in that industry. This book is transportation over that bridge of challenges.

In my 40 years at Waffle House, America's iconic 24‐hour restaurant company, I saw first‐hand confirmation of the old saying “Great players don't always make great coaches.” In the early years of our growth at Waffle House, we tried fruitlessly to turn great cooks into restaurant managers. We ignored the fact that the skill set involved in being a superb technician does not necessarily translate to the understanding of successful management and leadership principles. This same truth also applies across all industries and to the businesses within each. Just because you can “do” doesn't mean you can lead or manage. You might have a fantastic idea and still fail miserably because, in the end, execution wins out over brilliance, every time.

I wrote a leadership book called Find an Old Gorilla. The title is crazy, but the premise is this: if you wake up one morning and realize you have to go through a jungle, it would make sense to find an old gorilla and take him or her along because the old gorillas know where all the good paths are – and also the quicksand.

So, if you are interested in, are considering the pursuit of, or are actually engaged in the craft brewing and/or the microbrewery business, D.C. Reeves is your old gorilla. He has a track record of demonstrated business success, he understands beer and beer production, he speaks fluent leadership and management (including start‐up management), and he wrote this book for you.

—Bert Thornton
Vice Chairman Emeritus,
Former President and COO,
Waffle House, Inc

WITHOUT THE HELP of so many important people, this journey would not have been taken, these lessons would not have been learned, and this book would not exist.

Our Pensacola community, which has embraced us and continues to motivate us to try bigger and better things. Thank you for believing in us and for becoming a hometown that makes us proud.

My parents: my mom, Connie Bookman, and stepfather, Alan Bookman, my father, Jim Reeves, and my stepmother, Susan Reeves, who have been unwavering supporters in my family, my life and my career.

My brother, J.J. Reeves, and my sister‐in‐law, Lindsay Reeves, for wearing our shirts and being amazing stewards of Perfect Plain, even when you're three states away.

My stepbrother, Jack Johnson, his wife, Kimeran, and their children, Barrett and Irelyn. While sitting in my car parked just two blocks from where Perfect Plain would open, Jack was the first person I talked to in 2015 when I decided I'd make a run at opening my own brewery (even if it just seemed impossible then). Thank you for your friendship, support, and confidence in this crazy idea way back when.

Reed Odeneal, the co‐founder and Director of Brewing Operations at Perfect Plain. He was the brains and heart behind our brewing program, and I would not have dared to take this journey without his knowledge, work ethic, and expertise.

Quint and Rishy Studer, whose mentorship, guidance, support, and immense flexibility with my time as his employee has allowed this journey to happen. Perfect Plain would not exist without them.

Shannon Reeves, Caroline's mom, who allowed me to chase dreams all those years.

Our staff at Perfect Plain Brewing Company and Garden & Grain: Bryant Liggett, Nate Simmons, Chrissy Helvenston, Derek Barney, Billy Looney, Sarah Hutchins, Jeff Belot, Jessi Dosen, Jacob Mata, Brad Foster and Nic Gable. I work harder and rest a little easier because of this amazing team. Thank you for your passion, work ethic, and the pride you take in Perfect Plain. I'm proud to say you all work for our company.

Our co‐investors, Josh Sitton, Kristen Sitton, and Robert Davis, for believing and trusting in a first‐time business owner and a first‐time brewing operations manager. We promised we'd bring something new to our community and we hope we've made you proud.

Randall Wells for all of the “pro bono” business and financial advice. We're a fortunate recipient of your passion to help entrepreneurs whenever you can.

Bert Thornton, for all of the kind words and those Sorrento Road Waffle House lunches that brought me so much knowledge and confidence.

Scott Zepp, the co‐founder of World of Beer, who was always a helpful ear and whose positive words and outlook gave me the courage to take this entrepreneurial journey.

Dottie DeHart of Dehart and Co. as well as Matthew Holt, Brian Neill, and Peter Knox at John Wiley & Sons for all of your help in making this book possible.

Lisa Nellessen Savage, Jake Newby, Jim Little, Kevin Robinson, and Andy Marlette at the Pensacola News Journal and Rick Outzen and Joani Delezen at the Independent Weekly in Pensacola for sharing our start and the growth of our company with our Pensacola community. A big thank you to Lisa and Kaycee Lagarde for help with the final editing of this book and saving me from my own procrastination.

Kevin Hagen, our general contractor at H&H Building Group, who has put up with us on two projects and counting. Thank you for always picking up the phone, never freaking out when we change our minds, and for giving us a great example of what a customer‐contractor relationship should be like.

Danny Zimmern, who helped us find our perfect building at 50 E. Garden St.

James Hosman, for all of the guidance through our first Small Business Administration loan. I always appreciate you lending your ear.

Our PPBC Founder's Club Members. Thank you for your unwavering support and investing in us before we ever opened. We'll always be grateful for your support.

Beach Community Bank for taking a chance on first‐time business owners as well as Hancock/Whitney Bank for believing in our company's vision for the future.

Barbara Scott Payne and Nicole Webb, who have always been helpful when my life as a half employee/half entrepreneur was (and still is) rather crazy.

The leaders at the Studer Family of Companies, who have helped me develop and grow as a business owner. I'd venture to guess some of this book will sound quite familiar.

Gene Williams, the owner of Warchant.com. He hired me as his managing editor in Tallahassee, Florida, and I had a chance to meet and work with our part‐time IT/video extraordinaire Reed Odeneal, marking the unofficial start of this craft beer journey.

My great bosses in my previous life, Bill Vilona and Bob Heist of the Pensacola News Journal and Tommy Deas of the Tuscaloosa News. You taught me many lessons, both in how to be a writer and how to be a reporter, that in some backwards way ended up with me not writing football, but beer instead.

Dennis Richards and Mirror Image Brewing Co. in Frederick, Colorado, for a few great days in 2016 that helped us prepare for our craft beer journey.

My group text thread: Jeff Hoffman, Mike Soderlind, Steve Brown, Chris Strickland, John Lark Herron, and Derek Barney. Always good for laughs while I’m trying to do work.

Other friends and fellow Pensacolians who have impacted our lives and business in a positive way: Michelle MacNeil, J.P. MacNeil, Samba Johnson, Kevin Krieger, Lumon May, Daniela De Castro, Mayor Grover Robinson, Michelle Salzman, Scott Remington, Steve Schale, Chad Henderson, Travis Peterson, Joe and Suzannah Driver, Alex Andrade, Jon Shell, Jayer Williamson, Will Dunaway, Dylan Nadsady, Bruce Vredenburg, Adam Roth and his band Grizfolk, Keith Hoskins, Bob Anderson, and Jason and Sarah Blaydes.

Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head, Jeffrey Stuffings of Jester King, Audra Gaiziunas of Bhramari, Doug Reiser of Burial, Bart Watson of the Brewers Association, Nic Pelaez, Director of Hospitality at Modern Times Beer Co., and Matthew Stevens and David Stein of Creature Comforts for your time and contributions to this book to help breweries nationwide.

THIS IDEA BEGAN on Church Street in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2015. I realize the irony of this specific street locale, probably as some kind of Freudian nod to the higher power we needed to see us through on this journey.

My business partner, Reed Odeneal, the brewing operations expert in our two‐man team, lived there at the time and we were actually exploring opening a brewery, this thing that we used to joke about as co‐workers a few years earlier that we both knew would never come to fruition.

Except now it might. Or at least we were meeting to talk about it. A shift in my job responsibilities in Pensacola, Florida, was pending, and while my job wasn't in jeopardy, it was enough of a spark in timing to give this wild idea the smell test. I had returned to Pensacola, my hometown, about a year before, and I knew if I were ever going to do this, our best chance to be successful would be in this market that I knew well and knew was undersaturated compared to the burgeoning craft beer industry happening nationwide.

He was smart, with a professional background in IT and tons of homebrewing experience. I had grown up around business in my family and spent more than a decade in journalism, bringing at least a decent understanding of branding, communication, and marketing as well as some connections and credibility with local investors. Neither of us had ever opened our own business before.

But we texted about it. We split up some research for a few weeks. I texted back one day in November 2015 and wrote, “Let's open this brewery and just say f**k it.” (I never said I was measured.)

I bought a plane ticket on a whim and flew up to Asheville. Worst case was a solid excuse for a couple days drinking beer in Asheville.

We were at Reed's apartment on Church Street in a quiet living room save for the claws of two ill‐behaved dachshunds scampering across the hardwood floor.

Every few minutes, one of us blurted out something we found online, or a calculation for how much we thought our power bill would be to brew a 10‐barrel batch, or a cool photo of a brewery we liked.

I remember a particular moment in this research. I came across a blog from a brewery (I forget which one), where they wrote this long, flowery post about their two‐year voyage from starting the idea of a brewery to their grand opening. The trying times, the reward of getting it done, the sacrifices, all of that.

“Two years – what took them so long?” I remember asking out loud, both rhetorically and naively. “They must not have known what they were doing.”

Neither did we.

So exactly two years and fifteen days later, Reed and I opened Perfect Plain Brewing Company in an old 5,400‐square‐foot print shop we purchased in downtown Pensacola. We learned a lot in those two years and fifteen days.

Humility, for instance.

Patience, too.

So many more things I can't wait to share with you in this book.

And I'll jump ahead, but we became one of Florida's busiest taprooms in our first year of operation and were among the top quartile in taproom beer production in spite of the fact that we distributed zero barrels. For us, that was a large accomplishment. We are tucked far from Florida's major population hubs. A town of less than 100,000, Pensacola is buried in the far northwest tip of Florida, just 10 miles from the Alabama state line. Our job was both quality and consumer beer education in this market, and all while doing things like making beer styles that had not been made here before and doing new things like our city's first‐ever bottle release. We were fortunate enough to beat our Year 1 revenue projection by 74 percent.

In Year 2, completed a $400,000 expansion into an outdoor space and private event venue in a former horse stable while working on a second expansion to create the city's finest cocktail bar and the city's firstever barrel room.

I'm writing the Microbrewery Handbook so we can share everything we learned about becoming brewery owners, and more specifically, entrepreneurs in the constantly evolving craft beer business. I hope this handbook is impactful, that it saves you from missteps, and it puts you in a position to thrive while sharing your beer and your heart with your community.

For those homebrewers and daydreaming entrepreneurs whose minds wander in their cubicle like mine did a few years ago, this book should lay the groundwork for all the other stuff that lifts your beer above the rest.

I don't want to scare you – you can do this. And your chances of success should increase after reading this book. I wish I would have had a book to help guide us through some of this in 2015.

For breweries, cideries, vineyards, or craft beer bars in planning, this should be a reference for you on your desk during these crucial months. And for breweries or bars already established, we share some of our implementable secrets that have helped us master employee engagement, company culture, a strong brand, and what we see as a bright future.

The craft beer market is evolving rapidly, maybe even more than you realize. And what we're seeing in 2019 is a plateau on the overall craft market. What seemed to be an invincible business model even four to five years ago – hundreds of breweries of all sizes and formats opening and a mere handful closing nationwide – has sharpened. Competition, likely around you and where you hope to begin or grow your brewery, has sharpened as well.

In November of 2018 the Brewers Association even created a new “Taproom” class of brewers to go with Packaging Breweries and Pub Breweries. This is a class that serves more than 25 percent of its product on site with minimal food operations and that produces fewer than six million barrels per year.

It's like anything else in business. People see a trend that's successful, and the market saturates. Add that to the fact that this is beer we're talking about here – a fun industry in the grand scheme of life – and you find the market where it is now.

Dogfish Head Brewing Founder Sam Calagione said it best in 2018 when he lovingly summarized the evolving craft beer market as a “phenomenon I'll call smiling mouth, jaws of death.”

He explained that there are two jaws that represent different strong sectors of the current craft beer market: taproom‐focused models and the other side of the coin, “fairly scaled” breweries that are doing multi‐state distribution. He advised not to get stuck in between those two models as our industry evolves.

“The bottom jaw, frankly, is more of those taproom‐oriented breweries that can kick ass because they're in control of their sales and they can get so much margin by selling across the bar,” he said. “So many of those business units, if they have quality, consistency, are well differentiated and focused, they're going to weather this storm with grace and aplomb.”

This book centers around that bottom jaw of the industry that we've created at Perfect Plain. Amazingly, while other distribution‐based sectors of craft plateau or fall, 15 percent of all draft beer sales in the U.S. were sold direct from breweries in 2018, according to the Brewers Association – an all‐time high.

My hope is that the Microbrewery Handbook will give you the entire toolkit you need to kick ass as a brewery focused on a hyper‐local taproom first and foremost – the place I believe is the most prudent and impactful to start in this industry today.

During the Florida Brewers Guild Conference in 2017, Sam Adams Founder Jim Koch told the audience that if he were opening Sam Adams today, he would do it as a taproom‐focused model.

This book focuses on the construction and refinement of your entire microbrewery organization from start to finish, from planning, strategy, financing, and permitting to common pitfalls, employee culture, and best practices.

We're going to cover a lot of ground here.

To find some focus, I spent a week in Nashville to write this book, and when people asked me what I was doing in town, I would elevator‐pitch the topic of my book this way: If you know how to make great beer, or you're already making great beer, my book is covering everything else it takes to start or grow a successful microbrewery.

This microbrewery book will not spend a lot of time focusing on the beer itself. I know – great beer is why we got into this business, right? It's what we're passionate about. Even though I'm not a professional brewer, I would never have opened any type of business other than a craft brewery. I'm a craft beer fan and love so much about the industry and how it has impacted communities. I would have never opened it anywhere other than my hometown.

There are plenty of product‐focused books written by people who have forgotten more than I know about the creation of beer. If you are looking for the perfect imperial stout grain bill or techniques on rectifying a stuck mash, this is not your book.

However, we will talk some about sizing up your system for success and the marriage between a successful operation and the ability it gives you to add muscle to your long‐term beer quality and offerings.

But even if you don't own a brewery yourself yet, as the craft industry populates (and let's not even get into the invasion of craft spirits), I can guarantee you one thing: Every day that goes by in this industry means that more of the success of a brewery will be predicated on who can do all of the other stuff well.

“I think there's definitely more interest in talking about the business of beer,” Jester King Founder Jeffrey Stuffings told me earlier this year. “I definitely do feel it's less of a taboo subject (than in years past). When we started doing stuff like this, I personally felt, like, ‘Oh man, maybe I'm kind of selling out here. Maybe I'm starting to be the man, whatever.’

“And now, I just don't feel that. I think it's responsible to be doing these things and having these conversations.”

Who can create a differentiating customer experience? Who will spend the time to understand permitting, buildout, and how to avoid construction pitfalls? Who can make their place a great one to work and treat their employees like they're owners? Who can learn to hire brewers and bartenders brilliantly using the same process that major hospital systems use to hire their CEOs? Who is willing to drop their ego to do the right thing for the organization and its employees? Who will use measurable achievement to make sure the organization is on track? Who will use their social media and branding consistently and optimally to build the company's image the right way?

In the book E‐Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, author Michael Gerber explains how the vast majority of small businesses in our nation are opened by “technicians.” That means the baker opens the bakery. The chef opens the restaurant. The brewer opens the brewery. It's the natural progression of someone looking to use their passion for bigger reward and satisfaction.

But if you can separate yourself from the love of brewing for a moment, the truth is that the technical skill to bake a great wedding cake or cook perfect escargot or develop a delicious hazy IPA, in the grand scheme of small business, is likely a much smaller piece of the pie than you think. The problem is, many technicians don't realize this until it's too late. They focus so much on the technical that they lose sight of everything around them. Or they don't see pitfalls coming. Or in some cases, ego gets in the way of sound decision making.

Don't get me wrong; there is a litany of major success stories, like Calagione himself, of technicians opening amazing breweries. Tons of them. But in many cases, including Dogfish Head, breweries make smart business decisions based on market conditions and surround themselves with a great team and the knowledge to run a craft beer business, not just brew beer.

Gerber's book also talks about the massive difference in success of a franchise company against a single‐chain small business. Why? Because of the structure. The standard operating procedures. Those are baked in from the start, and that illustrates how important this other non‐beer stuff is.

Here is a sample of common mistakes I've seen with closed and struggling breweries around the nation:

1. Overspending on equipment and underspending on your taproom.
2. Poor employee culture and customer service because they're treated like an afterthought to beer.
3. Ego dictating important decisions like the mix of styles on a tap list or the idea that a brewery's differentiator in a market will be “We're going to make the best beer.” (Don't we ALL think that?!)
4. The inability to delegate important parts of your company – I call this “not finding the right seats on the bus.”
5. Lack of preparation on the brewery organization outside of brewing equipment and brewery design.

If you are a brewer who is pursuing your dream to open your own place, you've come to the right place. I'm here to equip and prepare you for your experience moving from mere technician to part technician, part entrepreneur. I consider the most important part of Perfect Plain's early success to be that Reed and I balanced each other, trusted each other, and were self‐aware of our strengths and weaknesses.

I'm writing this book not only because we were able to open a microbrewery successfully, but because we've done it recently. In this craft beer climate. And while there are so many great resources out there in this industry, at the pace it evolves now, I feel sharing this recent experience can prove more bountiful in your quest.

In my previous life, before I put every cent I had into Perfect Plain, I spent fifteen years as a journalist covering college football at Florida State University and the University of Alabama. All those road trips and taproom Friday nights all over the South nurtured my love for craft. And whatever sliver of journalist brain survived when I left the business meant that throughout our two years and fifteen days of preparation to open PPBC, I kept good notes and remembered things that impacted us the most, and hurt the most, and all the things I would write about if I were to ever tell our story. The stories I would want to make sure I tell prospective business owners before they take the leap.

So, let's be clear: If you are reading this book, I'm making an assumption about you. I'm assuming that you and your team are committed to high‐quality and consistent product that you're proud to serve. Or that you're committed to hiring the right person who knows how to do this for you. This is, of course, vital for success. I can't help you sell terrible beer. We all know that the saturation of the market has brought us great beer. It's also brought us some bad beer that we are all concerned will taint new craft consumers.

We're going to work on the rest of the pie, one that was once optional in this space several years ago. Today, growing your brewery into a healthy organization that makes beer is an absolute must.

THESE PAGES AHEAD outline our learning experience opening Perfect Plain Brewing Company in Pensacola, Florida, a 10‐barrel taproom‐focused company that took more than two years of planning, coffee, learning, beer, anxiety, mentors, excitement, luck, and hard work to open our doors on November 21, 2017.

What I hope to provide in this book, oddly, reminds me so much of my own interesting experience when I was 15 and learning how to drive a car with a manual transmission. People younger than 30 may be unfamiliar with such a term.

In 2000 I had saved up $1,800 from summer restaurant jobs to buy my first car. I made the crucial first mistake of allowing resident master negotiator and my father, Jim Reeves, to actually do the vehicle purchasing.

Dad calls one afternoon and says he has my first car, and as the suspense builds and my enthusiasm overflows, around the corner comes a black 1991 Toyota Tercel hatchback. This is the precise vehicle you buy when you have absolutely no concern about whether high school girls will find you attractive. Torn seats. Busted shocks. The tires could probably be fitted to a riding lawnmower, and in case I ever expected to arrive at social gatherings with any semblance of suave, my muffler sputtered loudly for what felt like minutes after the car ignition was cut.

Today, I rationalize this to simple “character building.”

So Day 1 in the Tercel was a lesson from Jim on how to drive a stick shift. I had zero days' experience; my father, who was already 62 at the time, knew manual transmission for the majority of his life.

The lesson began with spins around his office parking lot. It did not go well.

He was unconsciously competent. He had done this for so long and had learned how to do this so long ago, that it just came naturally to him. Probably like mashing in or bartending for many of us today. Problem is, for many who reach that level of competence, you just might stink when it comes to teaching people who are consciously incompetent. I was consciously incompetent. I was conscious very early, likely after the first whiplash‐inducing stall, that I had no idea what I was doing. My father was equally bad at communicating a sound strategy for success. Conceptually, this is why Michael Jordan, the best basketball player of all time, would probably struggle as an NBA head coach while his significantly less heralded Chicago Bulls teammate in the early 1990s, Steve Kerr, is considered perhaps the best coach in the NBA. Jordan played at too high a level. He was too good even to remember how to teach a rookie about the intricacies of cracking the roster at the NBA level.

So, after that first driving debacle, a classmate of mine, Allie Gessler, taught me how to drive a stick shift in 10 minutes. I had it. Allie, of approximately eight months of legal driving experience, was able to clearly explain what I was doing wrong and identify what I didn't know. Why? Because she had learned recently herself. She had felt her own whiplash pain and remembered how to stop it. In the midst of just telling me to take my foot off the clutch and onto the gas, my Dad left out the subtleties, like slowly take your foot off the clutch as you add to the gas, like they're tied together on a string.

As someone who just opened a taproom‐focused microbrewery two years ago, I hope to be that guide for you. The one who remembers the granular yet vital parts of starting their own microbrewery because we've recently done it ourselves. We've done it in this ever‐changing, saturating, and evolving market of craft beer where growth has started to plateau and the strategy for success looks wildly different from how it would have even six or seven years ago.

Perfect Plain Brewing Company has been quickly successful beyond our expectations, for which I'm so thankful. Reed and I were prepared. And I think our company and its foundational culture is built around some exceptional things that any brewery, new or old, regardless of size, could install to create a better place to work and a better place for customers to enjoy. We have advantages and some unique ways of doing things that I'm so excited to share with the craft beer world.

My hope is the sheer freshness and recency of my journey of opening a craft brewery, coupled with my coincidentally convenient background as a reporter who reports to nice readers like you, means that our hard lessons and our breakthrough successes prove beneficial for you.

There are so many great, experienced and brilliant minds in the craft brewing business, and that fact makes me proud just to say I'm in the same world. I'm both fortunate and grateful that some of those incredible minds were willing to contribute their thoughts and experiences in these pages to help others achieve their goals. I learned so much from them as they shared their valuable time.

We'll talk about the value of a taproom, about financing, about partners, about tough lessons learned and potential hurdles in your quest to start your dream.

When we called this a handbook, we meant it.

This book can be read front to back, but it can be used just as effectively as a quick referral guide. You can read up on or refer to specific topics that you hope to learn about or improve.

In addition, you'll find a robust reference guide and a website, www.microbreweryhandbook.com, that will include some templates and documents I refer to throughout the book that you are welcome to utilize in your business.

Some chapters have a deeper dive; others are fast‐paced and bulleted. The goal isn't a rambling novel, but a practical and memorable guide to create and grow your own success. The goal isn't to go mind‐numbingly deep, but to inform well and spark additional research if needed.

You should be able to find value in these pages regardless of whether you're just a home brewer daydreaming of opening your own place or you're already a successful microbrewery owner looking to make some improvements.

Collaboration, sharing and striving to create a quality product are what make our industry so great.

By the way, while you'll hear me mention breweries the most, the overwhelming majority of this book also translates to opening a cidery, a distillery, a kombucha bar, and so on. The principles of creating a great place to work, understanding projections, setting goals, and marketing your brand can cross all of those avenues, no matter what you're manufacturing in the back.

In addition, I was fortunate enough to have an amazing list of people sit down with me and share their thoughts about the industry, their successes, and even some of their mistakes.

In these pages you will get thoughts from Dogfish President Sam Calagione, Jester King Founder Jeffrey Stuffings, Brewers Association Chief Economist Bart Watson, Modern Times Director of Hospitality Nic Pelaez, Burial Beer Co. Co‐Founder Doug Reiser, and Bhramari Brewing CEO Audra Gaiziunas. You'll also hear from Quint Studer, the founder of the nation's top healthcare consulting company, Studer Group. He has been credited as the pioneer of cultivating a high level of customer service in the healthcare space, much of which has translated to the craft beer world at Perfect Plain.

Let's let off the clutch and get started.

LET'S LAY THE groundwork.

Before a tactical deep dive on how to make this microbrewery dream a reality, we'll attack some of the overarching beer topics, including the state of the ever‐evolving craft beer industry with Brewers Association Chief Economist Bart Watson, the pure power of the craft beer taproom in today's industry, and a key that translates to any brewery in any region in any format: how to differentiate yourself.

Our friend Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head was even gracious enough to share his thoughts with us about the industry, its future and how to be welldifferentiated.

This foundation will help any brewery hone its scope and get going down the right path to success.