For the last several months, the guys behind Deep Ellum Brewing Company—John Reardon, Jim Piel and Scott Frieling—have been perfecting their suds using a fancy brew machine from Piel's garage in Plano. The trio originally thought they'd have their downtown brewery up and running by summer, but it looks like beer nerds will have to wait a few more months to sample the craft brews. They've gotten clearance from TABC and construction is underway, but there's one thing holding them up: money (or lack thereof). Reardon fills in the details, below.
Tell us about the location.
We purchased a building [2821 Saint Louis Street] from an existing commercial printing business. Right now, we have about 5,000 square feet to work with. Within the next three years, we hope to expand to 16,000 square feet. Our plan is to grow this thing fairly quickly.
When will you be up and running?
The ball doesn't stay in our court for long. We've submitted our application to TABC and everything is good to go on that end, plus construction has already started. At this point, we're just waiting on our lender to get their ducks in a row. If we get the money sometime in the near future, we could get beer out the door by August. The safe bet, though, is September or early October.
What's the construction status?
We started construction last Friday. Our contractor and his team have been working nights and weekends to get this thing done. Our equipment arrives on Monday, so once we put that in place we'll pretty much be ready to go. The only problem is we can't afford our boiler or chiller at this point in time. We have to wait until the bank closes.
How much beer do you expect to produce?
We want to be small-batch, artistic brewers so we won't be doing big runs of a single beer. Based on the size of the space, I think we'll be able to do about 5,000 barrels a year.
What beers can we expect?
It's tough to say where our initial lineup will fall. We have a killer Blonde, IPA and California Common, but those aren't the bread and butter of our brewery—those are our mainstays. We want to be more creative, so we're going to put out a bunch of styles with an artistic twist. I just don't know exactly what those will be yet. [The Feast]
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