Belated Intro

I feel a bit guilty that my last post was a bit anti-climatic, so I decided to write another. I figured that since that, initially, I will be the only full time employee of Rushing Duck, that I should give myself a proper introduction. 

My love of good beer started in college. Like most 18 year-olds I started off drinking the standard fizzy, yellow swill that is vastly abundant at any college in the United States.  My epiphany happened one night after stumbling home from a college party. My roommate and I both decided that while we enjoyed the social aspect of beer, we could not stand the taste of the mass-produced stuff at our disposal. However, at our age we were unable to head on over to the local bar or liquor store to try a bunch of new stuff. So I decided that if I couldn’t buy it, I’d make it. That Christmas the first gift I asked for was a homebrew kit. Like any good parents, my parents (and current owners of Rushing Duck) were ecstatic to get one for me. Understandably, my first few batches were less than delicious. I knew that there was a substantial learning curve involved before I started making good beer. During this time I also happened upon an ID of “questionable legality”. Over the course of the next year I made it a point to try as many styles of beer as possible to find out what I did and did not like. This really helped me develop my palette. So I started homebrewing like crazy at this point. One day it kind of occurred to me that I was investing a lot more of my time into brewing and learning about beer than I was in pursuing my degree in Political Science, so shortly before graduating, while all of my friends were applying to schools for their Master’s Degree, I was applying to the American Brewer’s Guild to learn how to brew professionally. I was accepted to the program, but there was a year long wait list before I could start. In the meantime I figured the best thing to do was spend as much time as I could in breweries by volunteering my time cleaning kegs, working bottling lines, and mopping floors for a couple NJ breweries. After a few months, an entry level job as a cellarman opened up at Weyerbacher Brewing Co. in Easton, PA. Though it was a long commute from my home in North Jersey, I couldn’t pass it up. For the next few months I cleaned fermenters, kegs, floors, and anything else that needed cleaning. At the same time I was also taking the American Brewers Guild as a distance learning program. By sheer luck, Weyerbacher was looking for a new brewer the week I was scheduled to graduate from the ABG. I was lucky enough to get the promotion to brewer and then a year later to Lead Brewer.   However, as good as it has been to be a part of Weyerbacher for the past 3+ years, being in charge of my own brewery has always been the goal. After a ton of planning, my dad and I decided to pull the trigger and secure the financing that we needed to put it all together.

That about catches us up to present day.  We hope to be selling beer in the spring of 2012 (assuming no significant setbacks). Check back often and stay up to date on our progress!

- Dan

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