Chubby Mermaid Brewing Co.

Welcome to Chubby Mermaid Brewing Co.  What is a Chubby Mermaid? No no please do not be offended, the term Chubby Mermaid  is a loving term given to the our beloved Florida Manatees. We at Chubby Mermaid Brewing honor these majestic creatures and will donate a percentage of beer sales to the Save the Manatee Club as an annual donation.

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Road to Pro

So what got us here!

 

In 2007, during Christmas, I casually mentioned my interest in brewing beer at home. To my surprise, I received a Mr. Beer Kit as a gift. Although it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, I decided to give it a try and brewed my first beer in early 2008. It wasn’t the best beer I’ve ever tasted, but it was satisfying to know that I had made it myself. That’s when I knew that brewing beer was something I wanted to pursue.

 

Evolution.

 

I quickly upgraded from the Mr. Beer Kit and purchased a proper kit from my local Home Brew Shop. With this new equipment, I brewed several batches on the stove and the quality of my beers improved significantly. They were even good enough for me to share with friends who couldn’t believe that I had made them myself. It was gratifying to witness their surprise and enjoyment of my creations.

 

Life gets in the way.

 

 

Unfortunately, life threw me a curveball after just two consecutive batches. As an Army soldier, I received orders to deploy to Iraq and had to put brewing on hold for a while. Despite the interruption, serving our country in this direct manner was something that meant a lot to me.

So in May 2008 I left for training.  Every deploying Soldier or unit gets additional training before entering an active sustainment / combat zone.  So I decided to buy some books for all that hurry up and wait everyone hears about, well the wait part was not over estimated to be clear, so I read some books, lots of them.  Yes, they were all about brewing beer, equipment hops, grains, water profiles, fermentation, and recipe creation, needless to say I had to time to re-read these books a few times.

 

The sickness.

 

Ok fast forward to summer of 2009, I am back in the good ole US of A, armed with tons of knowledge but little practical experience, so time to get practicing.  This where I often say that the beer brewing hobby is a sickness. Yeah, I bought a lot of Brew stuff, kept perfecting the craft, and yeah got deployed to Iraq again 9 months later but eventually I came home.  So the next chapter in life and 14 years of recipe creation and buying more equipment (the sickness), its time to see how to make this dream happen. If you ever want to bore yourself to sleep, I have a youtube channel that shows me from early on to today on the 14 year journey.  This 11 year video blog on youtube, (link here), is where you can see the equipment and techniques evolve over time.  What was good info 10 years ago might be all wrong today as the beer science improves.  Some of the content on the channel makes me cringe today but it’s what we thought we knew back then.  It’s a community of Brewers like us who keep pushing the styles and science all striving to make and serve a better beer, that is how this industry remains relevant. If you are interested in brewing beer at home a good group to start with is an online home brew club called Brewtubers. Brewtubers home brew club are on the cutting edge of new ideas and collaboration. If you are a home brewer go check them out. Brewtubers.com

 

Welcome.

 

Welcome to our journey, we hope you love our beers as much as we do!  The videos below chronicle the brewery opening process, if you are interested.  I will say out of the 3 business I have previously started/owned, this project is the most complex and expensive adventure yet.  We hope you enjoy our efforts, Cheers!