What the heck is the Ten Sleep Brewing Company?
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(Photo by Rebecca Travers - 307 Magazine!)
We are a small, family operated farm brewery in the tiny town of Ten Sleep in North-Central Wyoming, perched directly below the big red cliff (Signal Butte) outside of town. My parents built the farm from nothing over the last 20 years, during which time The Barn (in which we are building the brewery) and our swimming pond have turned into major social centers. I say "major" with tongue-in-cheek, considering Ten Sleep's population is in the neighborhood of 260 people. :). Our Brewery and Tap Room is at about 90% and we hope to be making beer within the next month.
Our team includes my dad, Cole Smith, as the President, Idea Guy, and all-around Hard Worker. Dad is almost single-handidly doing the entire remodel. Myself, Justin, an aerospace/mechanical engineer by training and trade and craft beer drinker and enthusiast the rest of the time. I'm all in after quitting my day job and dragging my family to the Boonies to be the Operations Guy and On-site Brewer. My brother Louie, a cowboy, welder, and miner, and as a guy who knows pretty much everybody in the state, our Marketing and Distribution dude. Our Beer Wagon Builder, Investor, and All Around Hand, Dave. My mom Carol, busting her butt doing the books and much of the remodel layout and design. And finally, the most important part of any brewery, our award winning Brewmasters Jeremy Tofte and Kirk McHale from Thai Me Up / Melvin Brewing in Jackson Hole.
Our mission is to make "Good Beer for Good People", by hand, with the freshest ingredients possible.
How did we get here?
As most of you can appreciate, we are on a shoe string budget. Many will say that you can't build a brewery for less than $250k... at the end of this year we'll be in for less than $150k. To make this possible we raised approximately $60k in investments from trusting friends and family, took out a standard bank loan for an additional $55k, and traded much of the remodel labor for shares.
We are proud to say that we have not raided any taxpayer pockets in this process.
Key to our strategy was an American-made brewhouse from a fabricator in Colorado that we could afford. His competition was twice as expensive, and after months of trying we just couldn't get there.
Unfortunately this is where things broke down. 16 weeks into a 16 week lead time order we started getting very bad news. At the end of the day (3 weeks later) we had a damaged mashtun/HLT, a damaged brew kettle, a couple of pumps, a smashed up brew platform, and not much else. No fermenters, no bright tank, no heat exchanger, no controls, no water heater, no hard plumbing... the list goes on. Fortunately we'd only paid 40% down. A day and a half after putting our kettle on a truck the fabricator was out of business. (Whoa!) Our fun didn't stop there, as local shippers lost (how do you lose 1,600 lbs of steel!) and severely damaged much of what they sent. It was quite a ride.
Where do you come in?
Enough with the hard news! We've been fighting through the recovery over the last 6 weeks and making great progress with lots of help from family, friends, locals, and those in the craft beer industry. Our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/TSBCo) has swelled to almost 1200 enthusiastic (and as they remind us, thirsty) supporters. I've sourced many of the missing components and my brother and a good friend recently fabricated a completely new bottom for our kettle and are working on the platform. We are literally a month away from revenue.
Unfortunately, by receiving the system weeks late and then spending weeks fixing problems and finding missing components we've spent a lot of cash and lost critical revenue during the busiest time of year - 4th of July, Sturgis, and the Nowoodstock music festival. We badly need a cash infusion to allow us to complete the buildout, get operational for hunting season, and get us into the winter. We feel a great weight of responsibility to our investors and our community to make this work.
It is difficult for us to come to you with hat in hand - our debt of gratitude would be great.
The Nitty Gritty
Our campaign target is my best guess on what is required to purchase the following items, which were supposed to be supplied by our Fabricator and/or were not completed by him. We have already purchased and received many of the big-ticket missing items, including Fermenters and Heat Exchangers, and are pursuing the shipping company for help with shipping damages.
You would be helping us purchase:
- Bright Tank and Plumbing
- Stainless Fittings, Valves, and Hoses
- Circulation Heater & Controls
- Pump Carts
- CIP Plumbing and Fabrication
- Sparge and Recirc Plumbing and Fab
- 1 HP Pump with VFD Controls
- Brew Platform Railings, Step, and Remediation
- Pump Controls and Wiring
I understand that we will probably realize 70% - 75% of what is donated after taking the cost of perks, shipping, Indiegogo, and credit card fees into account. We are committed to covering as many of these external costs as we can so that your donations go directly towards real hardware. We are also committed to managing this campaign so that we can meet our goal - both because we badly need the cash and because if we don't, Indiegogo takes a much bigger bite. Not a bad incentive, actually... certainly keeps a campaign honest :).
What are the perks?
Now for the fun stuff! Hopefully these items are a win-win for everybody. You get a cool, functional conversation pieces for your hard-earned cash and we get to spread the TSBC word :).
Perks include stickers, pint glasses, growlers, shirts, a Hydroflask, and even your name on a Donor's plaque in the Tap Room and a framed TSBC thank you photo. All will be emblazoned with our unique logo which, if you look closely, is a silhouette of my brother riding a wild keg :). It's not fancy, it's not polished, but it is ours and it is Wyoming.
But really... a Brewery in Ten Sleep??
Some of you may still be wondering what kind of crazy person would put a brewery in a very small Wyoming town :). Fortunately it's not as crazy as you think. First and foremost, people from Wyoming are fiercely loyal. If we can provide them with a reasonably priced, quality product made on a farm in Wyoming, I believe they will give us the chance to succeed. Beyond this, Ten Sleep is a hub of activity in summer and fall. Situated at the foot of the Big Horns on Highway 16, we are a popular stop on the way to Yellowstone and the massive bike rally in Sturgis, and a destination for horseback riders, hikers, and bicyclists. Climbers have discovered Ten Sleep Canyon and turned it into one of the top, if not the top, destinations for varied and challenging wall climbing in Wyoming, and the Nowoodstock music festival is a huge draw in early August. High mountain lakes and streams attract fly fisherman from all over the world, and come Fall the area is very popular for trophy elk, mule deer, and antelope. Winter has it's own draw, with awesome back country snowmobiling and skiing, although at this point we don't plan to have the Tap Room open during the winter.
And the beer drinking? According to the Beer Institute, Wyoming is ranked 15th as far as gallons of beer consumed per person in the country. Wyoming also allows us to self-distrubute. Given these conditions, we plan to have the Tap Room open from May through October and conduct keg sales as broadly as possible given our production capacity. We relish the challenge of providing locals with easy drinking session beer and tourists with flavors to suit their varied tastes.
Other ways to help?
If you've made it this far, you must be interested :). Even if you can't contribute you can still make a huge difference. Please share our campaign with your friends and family and help us build momentum. We don't yet have a traditional website (it's in the plan!) but we have a well viewed, up-to-date Facebook page. Please stop by and drop us a note, we would love to hear from you.
www.facebook.com/TSBCo
Take a look at our photo gallery for shots of the buildout and the surrounding area. Better yet, come visit any time.
With sincere thanks and gratitude,
The Ten Sleep Brewing Company Team
Check out a simple Google Map showing the locations of our current donors here!
http://tinyurl.com/mpj9h3p
