Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

There's a kickstarter to start a brewery in Mason City. Looks pretty interesting - go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/199 ... g?ref=live for details.

Powersox

Interesting. It looks like they are going to meet their goal. They don't talk about the size of the brewery they want to build, but $15K doesn't seem like nearly enough. I suppose if they are just looking to cover licencing and maybe short-term rent, with the rest made up from regular loans it could work.

A lot of the small business loans still require a downpayment of some kind, usually around 10-20%. The kickstarter might also be a bit of a support-seeking. They can go to their moneylenders and tell them that they had X number of people support the brewery, and up the chances of getting everything else off the ground.
But I'm just throwing conjecture out there - I may be completely off.

Powersox

Its a great thing. I hope they do well. The more small towns that get breweries, the better Iowa becomes.

That sounds reasonable. I hop they can make it work. I hear of way too many people that vastly underestimate the costs involved with starting a business, and breweries even more so. It is a good marketing idea.

On 05/15/12 10:08, semanticdm wrote:

A lot of the small business loans still require a downpayment of some kind, usually around 10-20%. The kickstarter might also be a bit of a support-seeking. They can go to their moneylenders and tell them that they had X number of people support the brewery, and up the chances of getting everything else off the ground.
But I'm just throwing conjecture out there - I may be completely off.

Powersox

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Amen to that brother!

On 05/15/12 10:09, hoboscratch wrote:

Its a great thing. I hope they do well. The more small towns that get breweries, the better Iowa becomes.

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Hey guys,

My name is Jake Rajewsky, I'm the co-owner of MCB and I'll be the brewmaster. We'll have a 1 bbl system. We just got the 55 gallon boilermakers and the rest of the parts are trickling in.

We know that $15,000 isn't very much to start a brewery, we've put as much of our money into this project as we can and we have a few other small sources of capital.

We're really excited to get started and hope everyone on here will come visit!

If you guys have any more questions about our brewery I'd be happy to answer.

Very cool and best of luck to you Jake. Post here when you are open and I know I will stop in on my next pass through up to the Twin Cities.

What do you plan to use for a burner under that 55 gallon Boilermaker?

Great News Jake,
You going be up in time to hit the summer crowd at CLake? Post directions, I'd like to see your set-up.
Ad: I just read the website and watched the video. Once again, best of luck.

Matt F wrote:Very cool and best of luck to you Jake. Post here when you are open and I know I will stop in on my next pass through up to the Twin Cities.

What do you plan to use for a burner under that 55 gallon Boilermaker?

We're using a 10-inch, 60,000 BTU, Hurricane low pressure burner under each tank.

jjbuck wrote:Great News Jake,
You going be up in time to hit the summer crowd at CLake? Post directions, I'd like to see your set-up.
Ad: I just read the website and watched the video. Once again, best of luck.

Unfortunately I don't think we'll be ready and approved by the TTB for the summer crowd
We've got a ton of support from the people running a few of those festivals, so hopefully we'll be there next year!

We haven't decided on an exact location yet, we're looking a few places downtown. I'll post directions when we decide and you can definitely come check it out.