Building and setting up a brewery is quite a large task. Especially when we’re doing it all ourselves and without loans or investors. It’s a long process that has already been in full swing for 4-5 months. So here’s where we’re at in regards to our brewery construction. First, I guess we should determine what all we need in total.

Brewing Equipment:

-Control Panel to control the brewing process. We have that!

-Kettles to brew in. We have 1/2 of the money towards that.

-Fermenters. We are planning on getting 2-3 after the brewery is built.

-Bottling line: Will be built during the same time window as we are assembling and acquiring our fermenters.

-Other Misc: Figure it out once we have the other stuff!

As far as the equipment we need to brew, ferment, and bottle, we’re about halfway there from a financial standpoint. As soon as we get our new kettles we really believe things will begin picking up and we can then scale up our recipes for the 1.5 barrel batches and try some commercial “homebrew” sized batches to get everything dialed in. I would imagine we’ll need some “tasters” then for feedback and help getting rid of product!

-Application process: As soon as we finish building the brewery we will begin the process. We anticipate this stage beginning shortly after the first of the new year.

All in all we plan and hope to be in production and ready to begin bringing delicious beer to you in the summer of 2014 supposing everything works out. I would imagine that we’ll have a hiccup or two along the way but we’ll be sure to keep our updates posted here.

Cheers!

No. No one really needs another brewery. Should Portland have another brewery? Maybe. Will Portland have another brewery? Yes. And that’s not necessarily counting Brewery 26. There are a lot of people starting breweries in Portland. I believe at last count Portland had 70 breweries. That’s only within the city limits too. I bet there’s at least 20-30 more in the planning stages at this moment. So why another one?

Well first off, we’ve always wanted to make beer. So we’ve been doing that. Combined we have about 6-7 years brewing experience and combined have brewed probably close to 150-200 batches of beer. Granted that’s been all on the homebrewing stage, however it still resembles thousands of hours spent refining our craft (and reaping the benefits firsthand!).

Portland is also unique in it’s brewery mecca-ness. People here want to try new things. And there’s enough people wanting to try new beers that I believe Portland could probably sustain about 200 breweries in and directly surrounding city limits. Do I have any proof of this? No, however I have a hunch. And so far it seems that every brewery that opens up has been well received and hasn’t hurt other breweries. Portland will simply take market share from the macro breweries as new nano and micro breweries open. Craft breweries have a 17% market share in Portland, which is the highest in the nation. I wouldn’t be surprised if in 5 years from new Portland had a 25-30% craft brewing market share. This is truly and unique and amazing city!

A couple things that make us unique are that we are self funding our brewery. No loans and no investors (other than the two of us). The thought of having to repay a loan or pay investors each month doesn’t sound appealing (and aren’t investors just loans that never go away?). So we’re paying cash for everything and it’s definitely taking longer. We’ve been working at this for about 4-5 months now and we have another 5-6 months until we’re there. We do almost have our brewery built and from there we’ll be building our bottling line and working out our brite tank situation. So be patient as we get there. Not having debt or investors will allow us to pour all the money that would be going to them back into the brewery thus resulting in more beer in more locations.

So with that in the back of our minds we are jumping in and joining the party here in Portland!

We are Brewery 26. We are a new up and coming brewery located in Portland Oregon. This is the beer capital of the world and we are excited to become a part of the amazing culture of brewing in this city.

We are currently building our brewery and hope to be well into the Federal and State application process shortly after the New Year of 2014. We’ll be starting out with 3 beers that will closely resemble the culture and city of Portland.

We look forward to releasing our first beers for you enjoyment! Cheers!