Two years later Regan became a partner with Darren and I. He had an engineering background combined with an uncanny mechanical sense to think outside the box. Regan designed the initial All-Grain systems, which he coined his BrewSculptures, a name that has stuck to this day. Darren set up a welding shop in his garage and he and Regan would construct brewing systems in and amongst lawnmowers and weed whackers. Our first BrewSculpture was a 20-gallon system sold to Dan Funk in Redmond, WA. Dan is still brewing on BrewSculpture #1.  I actually owe Dan a big thank you for pushing us to make it. He gets a lifetime 10% discount on all orders.

Regan and I delivered the first system to Dan in person, a 16 hour overnight drive in his 1972 Ford courier pick up. Let me briefly summarize Regan and this road trip: Regan’s nickname is Mad Dog and his ideal  road trip is to purchase a 32 piece bucket of Kentucky fried chicken sitting shotgun for all meals, making me impersonate a magazine writer to get free beers at every brewery we passed, and getting in verbal sparring matches with other drivers before we ever got out of town. Actually it was before we ever got on the freeway, but I digress…

The beginning years were tough. We grossed $3,000 in 1995 and $36,000 in 1996. My low point was going to the accountant in early 1997.  There we sat with over $30,000 in debt with gross sales of $36,000 for the previous year with no silver lining in site. I honestly would have quit at that time had we not accumulated so much debt. I was too mentally and financially vested to see it fail.

Things started to get better in 1997 and I started to meet incredible people who donated their time to help the business succeed. Four of those people are Colette Lamm, Mike Milem, Jason Petros, and of course Chris Graham. Colette designed the very first database that we used after she dropped by one day, fresh out of work from Microsoft, and saw me hand write an invoice with no record of who they were, what they bought, or where they lived, etc. which is all very critical data for a fledging mail order company. It was designed in Access and for eight years we used, abused and pushed that same database to the very, very outer limits of what Access can actually handle.

Mike Milem was a customer who came by every day and helped me pack hops for free. To say he is addicted to hops is an understatement. You could easily assess the severity of his disease if you could ever see him stick his entire head into a 44 lb box of hop pellets and inhale like it is his last breath. Mike and I lived beer together for a couple hours each day and looking back now they were some of the best afternoons of my life. Fortunately he and I still find the time to enjoy a beer here and there (not as much as we would like since we both now have kids) since Mike has worked with us as our full-time welder since 2001. While working another job Mike went to welding school and joined us after graduation. If you order anything from us that is made of stainless and welded, Mike was the man. Even considering his addiction to hops was being satisfied on a daily basis, to work for free is something I will always be thankful for.

Jason Petros was a young customer who I could barely hear because he was so shy. You would find this very hard to believe if you met him today - which you might - because he still works for us and goes to most of the festival and beer conventions that we attend. Jason started coming over in 1998 and packaging malt extract and rebuilding kegs for me in exchange for ingredient kits. His first job was to clean up a huge malt spill. Later on he quit his job at Starbucks and has been with us ever since. Jason went to film school while working for us and is currently working on an instructional line of videos we are creating for beermaking and winemaking as well as the beer and wine catalogs and even some wholesale sales.