Boondoggle Brewing

“I first considered the idea of opening a brewery in 2007 while my department was being outsourced. This change in job stability gave me the chance to re-think my career plans. I didn’t act quickly enough at this juncture and instead, a new corporate opportunity presented itself. Over the years the brewery discussions and ideas continued to pop up again and again at various levels of seriousness. Most commonly, it would be the topic of the evening while enjoying my homebrew with friends. In my free time I would work on business plans and do market research through the Brewers Association and other available resources; all the while commuting to my cubicle.

In the summer of 2012 my wife, Sarah, had a business trip planned for Europe. True to our nature we were able to turn her work trip into a proper boondoggle when we met up in Copenhagen (hello Mikkeller!). We managed a romp from Copenhagen to Bremen (Becks), then Brussels (hello Delirium, Cantillion, St. Sixtus, etc.!) and Amsterdam. This was a beer trip of a lifetime. While cruising on a canal boat in Amsterdam we came to one of the last two standing windmills within the city. As luck would have it, this windmill happened to house a new brewery. BROUWERIJ’T IJ. We abandoned our canal tour to check it out. The ‘windmill’ brewery has one of the most picturesque beer gardens that we had ever seen. The shared tables under a beautiful canopy of trees on the bank of a river created a magical atmosphere. The beer was fantastic as well. We were inspired! We talked endlessly about how we could incorporate these ideas into our very own brewery in the States. We were excited… and then we went home. We went back to work at our corporate cubicles and the magic slowly faded away.