This is Blue, a.k.a. Allison. She is in charge of putting together all the promotional items such as t-shirts and coasters as well as finding us cool events to sponsor. She is also a huge motivator and taste tester. This is Pants, a.k.a. Mike. Mike is the brewer, as well as the main man in charge of putting together this whole venture. Mike has been putting together this concept for quite some time, brewing beer, and reading tons of books on the subject in the interim. Our Story Blue Pants Brewery was born out of a love of craft beer and craft beer culture. This first brewery is meant to be a gateway to the second and an inspiration to other small brewers that it can be done on this scale with a healthy amount of hard work. We’ve already had phone calls and emails from other brewers who are planning to follow in our footsteps, and we provide any help that we can. Our journey with craft beer began when we moved to Seattle for 3 months in the summer of 2007. We fell in love with the culture of craft beer and the numerous craft beers available. Upon returning to Atlanta, Mike became interested in the process of brewing and started learning how to homebrew while finishing up a graduate degree at Georgia Tech. He began reading everything he could get his hands on about beer. Atlanta had a beer culture of its own to explore. We moved back to Huntsville (Mike is originally from here) in 2008 and were shocked by the dearth of craft beer and also the seriously restricted laws that even outlawed home brewing, which had become a major hobby for Mike. We decided that we needed to take some action to increase the culture of craft beer here in the state of Alabama. We began exploring how to make a nano-brewery work. Most big breweries will tell you that they won’t and they won’t make money. We both had jobs, but didn’t have the kind of money necessary to start a full scale brewery. It also seemed entirely too crazy to go in debt up to our eyeballs to have the brewery fail. Our game plan became: make the brewery grow itself. So we started planning a small brewery with the intent of not taking any salaries from the brewery and reinvesting every dime into our dream of a larger scale setup. In addition to making the brewery small, we had to cut down on costs associated with putting it together. Our family and friends pitched in and we remodeled the space by hand (and borrowed tool). Mike designed the brewing system and built it with the help of Charles and Albert. All of our brewing and fermenting tanks are converted wine fermenting tanks that were donated to us from a friend who used to own a winery in Mississippi. We signed our lease and began remodeling the space and constructing the brewing equipment in May with the goal of releasing beer in October. It was a close call to get it all done and get our licenses in time while working our regular day jobs. In October though, we rolled out the first production batches of Knickerbocker Red. We met at a local beer bar with tons of friends, family, and fellow brewers and polished off a number of ¼ Barrels of Knickerbocker Red. It was exactly the kind of event we wanted, where beer lovers could gather and talk about the beer. Since that event we’ve released an additional beer style, Pinstripe Stout, and have been reinvesting all the money the beer has made into ramping up production with the goal of doubling our output this year. Blue Pants is small right now, but we have an eye for a bigger future. Without investors yelling for profits and without relying on putting beer out the door to put food on the table, we can focus on what’s important, the beer. We do all our brewing on weekends or on the Friday off that Mike has every couple weeks. We clean kegs, mill grain, keg beer, and make any improvements on weeknights. Sure it’s a lot of work, but every minute spent at the brewery is an investment in a dream of better beer in our hometown. The Brewery The Brewery will consist of a 1.5 Barrel (or about 45 gallon) brewing system. Initially, distribution will be in 1/4 Barrel kegs to bars around the area, draft only. All the beer will be keg conditioned prior to distribution to ensure that it is at its maximum freshness, finishing the fermentation the moment it is loaded on a refridgerated truck out of the brewery.