Home and back again

Last week, I got in touch with George Thornton, the owner of The Homebrewer and Home Brewing Co. in North Park. I was investigating one of the many leads I regularly receive from within the San Diego brewing community. Like many, it seemed viable, though not necessarily logical. It involved some business alterations I vaguely knew that Thornton was working on, but the information I’d received seemed a tad unworkable from a revenue-generation perspective. When I got in touch with Thornton, he shared that what I’d heard was only partially correct. This happens all the time, so I wasn’t surprised, but he was disheartened that spotty info was getting around. We decided it would be best for him to share his news firsthand via our Voices of San Diego Beer series of guest articles. The following is the low-down on the changes he’s making to his pair of operations for 2021.

Home and back again

Let me start by saying that we’re open! In addition to assuring people of that, I am writing this piece because there have been some rumors going around about my plans for the latter businesses…rumors that are false. I was crestfallen to learn that others had spread falsehoods to the media, but appreciate having the opportunity to clear things up through San Diego Beer News. To those who spread the false rumors, thank you for your interest in our business. I assume from you speaking on behalf of Home Brewing Co. that you are also interested in assuming some financial responsibility. Hit me with your routing number on my AOL Instant Messenger, my beeper or my Nextel two-way. OK, back to the article.

Back in 2014, I had the goal of adding a small brewery to our very cool homebrew store, which we opened in 2012. The idea was to offer a variety of high-quality beers that would expose drinkers to forgotten styles, while also embracing new trends and techniques. No ethos, no battle cry; just fun, community and education. I’ve made concessions to that vision over the years, and now aim to correct the course.

I originally switched to a seven-barrel brewhouse, frankly because the numbers on the spreadsheet looked a lot better than a one-barrel system. This meant we had to focus a lot more on volume and packing the bar to capacity, which distracted us from the aforementioned fun, community and education. Throughout 2020, our whole team helped to plan a better way to articulate the original vision of our brewery and homebrew store. And in 2021, we are in the process of right-sizing our brewhouse and using all of that extra space to focus on education and training, as originally intended. We are also working hard to grow our homebrew store into the competitive e-commerce segment of our industry.

The economic realities mean that we are making short-term and long-term adjustments to the structure and makeup of our team. For instance, our full-time brewer position cannot sustain itself at the moment. This led to difficult conversations with some of our most valuable employees, including our head brewer, Jacob Bauch.

Jacob is (in my very qualified opinion) one of the best brewers in San Diego County. Over the year, he and I discussed at length his personal and professional goals and aspirations. We are extremely proud of the fact that he now works with our friend Doug Hasker at Puesto Cerveceria. That combo of all-around awesome people and brewing prowess is going to be incredible, and we can’t wait to visit often (and for them to visit us as well). Jacob will certainly be missed. He is a fantastic brewer and he put our beers on the world stage. I am grateful to have Jacob in my life, and I’m looking forward to transitioning our relationship from friends and coworkers to friends and colleagues. 

We will continue to have a licensed brewery and tasting room. We will continue to serve our favorite beers to our neighbors, colleagues, friends, family and homebrew customers. In some cases, we will oversee production of our core beers at our friends’ breweries. I will use our new, smaller brewhouse to focus on collaborations and perfecting our favorite styles. (Hint: some of them will not be hazy IPAs.)

Running a business requires naivete, and I’ve got that in spades. It also requires making decisions based on a mixture of “gut-feelings” and research. The gut-feeling aspect is perhaps the hardest to keep one’s finger on. I’ve found that the more research I’ve done and the more I’ve attempt to articulate my ideas, the more other people’s opinions and perspectives have pulled my gut in different directions.

In the end, I am grateful that I have had this opportunity to reevaluate what works and what does not work in our business. I am proud that we responded to this unique circumstance to challenge every aspect of how we live and work. We have chosen to focus on the parts that will bring us joy and sustained success for years to come. Since I opened our brewery inside our homebrew store, it is as if rational thought and gut feelings have been at odds with each other. It’s time to attempt, once again, to reconcile them and rearticulate my vision.

The TL’DR Version:

Not all that into reading? I get it. Here’s everything in a nutshell…

• We’re selling off our seven-barrel brewhouse because I never really wanted it in the first place.
• I’m getting myself the rad one-barrel brewhouse I originally wanted.
• I want to work more with the people I admire in the brewing industry to do fun small projects.
• I want to consult, teach and write more, and I want my business to facilitate and reflect that objective, instead of merely finance it. 
• Ecommerce for our homebrew store will get it a lot more attention than it has had in the past. This is good.
• We’ll refocus on education through classes, workshops, etc. 
• We’ll still have a tasting room, but our hours and our style of service will feel more like you’re sitting in a coffee shop inside of a bookstore.
• You’re totally invited.
• Our personnel is going to change a bit, and I’m bummed about that. 
• People in the industry need to stop being gossip hounds.
• We exploited the cloak of COVID-19 to reevaluate our entire model, and I am very excited about our decisions. 
• If things can grow and expand from here, then we will respond accordingly.