The Longest Pour
Tl;dr: We are still working very hard to get open this year.
Hi, we’re Joe and Civvy. For some it seems like we’ve been at this for nearly 3 years, which already feels like too long. For us, it’s really been closer to 12 when we first started brewing and the idea that we might move beyond home-brew someday started to take shape. It's been a weebly-wobbly timey wimey full of stuff we didn’t think about, plan for, or ever conceive. But hey, it’s all about the journey, not the destination. Right? Right???
We started home-brewing in our basement in 2014. We attacked the hobby with ferocity amassing kegs, CO2 tanks, and fermentation chambers to pump out the crispiest lagers in no time flat. We joined our local home-brew club, gave ourselves a name and a logo, attended conferences on water chemistry, tried our hands at sours, and asked the question apparently nobody is supposed to ask: what happens when you have a grain bill of 40% smoked base malt and an ABV of 14%? We were hooked and by 2016 were competing with like-minded folks in our local brew-off.
The next few years were full of boring career stuff and advanced education that filled our heads with visions of business ownership and freedom from our 9-5 desk jobs. Anxious for a little taste of that freedom we took our desk jobs on the road and spent some time exploring the country in our RV full time. Those long hours on the road and quiet nights by the fire gave us the gift of time to explore what we wanted our lives to look like in the future. The short answer was camping, coffee, and beer.
Back from our adventure we set about finding our future home. We settled in Seibert in 2020 and purchased the future home of Zittzers Brewing in early 2022. But what good is any origin story without a little tragedy? Shortly after the purchase we were faced with some serious medical issues followed by complications, followed by more surgery, followed by broken ankles, followed by foosball table inflicted smashed toes, followed by multiple long and trying recoveries. Every time we recovered and were ready to start again it seemed like another injury or misfortune popped up. You gotta start to ask yourself if the universe isn’t trying to tell you something. For more than a year the idea of opening a brewery had become a distant memory.
Time heals all wounds though and by 2024 we were determined once again to see this through. It was right about this time we truly began to understand just how little we knew as we stumbled, fumbled, and guffawed our way through plumbing, electrical work, construction, renovation, licensing, and just general decision making. Like, which fridge do we get? Do we serve food or not? Is Zittzers an ok name? Does it sound gross? Is this old logo going to look ok in print? What sort of fence panels do we get for the patio? How much rebar do we need to pour the concrete for this brew pit? How many bar stools is enough? And on and on and on. Every single decision seems to have 100 decisions wrapped into it; then of course once you make the decision you have to actually do the work. Evenings and weekends become runs for lumber, or power tools, or power tool batteries, or blades for power tools, or more lumber, paint, epoxy, PVC, more lumber, auction house, equipment store, more lumber. Always more lumber.
The one thing that’s remained pretty consistent the last couple years is excessive optimism and being wrong about it. Every couple months we thought for sure it’d just be a couple more months. Every couple months we were wrong. We’d complete a bunch of stuff on the list and for everything we checked off it seemed like we added 2 more. At this point you start making a lot of compromises that we woulda swore we wouldn’t have made 3 years ago; like do I really need the custom keg urinal or can we just fix the plumbing on the one we have and call it a day? Do we really need the custom kegerator countertop and 7’ tap station or can we just use the taps built into the kegerator? Can we build a bar? Should we? Do we really need to rip up the carpet and refinish the hardwood? Yes, yes we absolutely do need to rip up the carpet. Yes. 1000 times yes. Do we need to spend like two months doing a herringbone floor in the brewers office? Also yes. Should we maybe just hire someone to finish all these floors? Yes again!
From idea, to purchase, to building and dreaming this dream with our friends, family, and neighbors has been the hardest, most exhausting, scariest, absurd, and rewarding thing we’ve ever done. The anticipation is building, and we can't wait to share our hard work, a beer or coffee, some hearty meals, and a welcoming and fun community space with you all. In a couple months.
