This week I welcome Rick Goehring from Walnut River Brewing who shares an interesting story of starting a production brewery with very little money. Rick has the top selling Kansas produced Craft Beer now.
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Topics in This Week’s Episode (41:59)
- This week I welcome Rick Goehring. Rick is the head brewer and co-founder of Walnut River Brewing near Wichita, Kansas. Rick took a unique approach by building out his production brewery over a period of years with a relatively small amount of money while working full time at his IT job.
- We discuss how Rick got started brewing and how is passion for homebrew eventually led to him starting a brewery.
- Rick shares how he traded his home for a broken down building in El Dorado, Kansas and then lived in a small apartment in the building with his family while renovating it.
- We talk about how he purchased his initial brewing setup with $50K in cash and then jury rigged things like his glycol chiller to make it all work.
- We discuss some of the challenges with getting the brewery open and also how it eventually evolved into a production brewery rather than the restaurant-brewpub he originally envisioned.
- Rick shares his original lineup of beers, and we discuss how his Irish Red became the top selling Kansas brewed beer in the state.
- Rick shares his thoughts on running a brewery from a brewer’s perspective.
- He gives us his closing thoughts after starting a brewery on a shoe-string.
Sponsors
- Thank you to our sponsor Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine for sponsoring this episode. I encourage you to subscribe to their great magazine!
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