A Dream Come True — 3 Dogs Community Brewpub

When the owners of 3 Dogs Brewing first had a dream to start a community brewpub in a strip mall, they had to choose brewing equipment that met their budget and fit in their space. This video explores the how their dream came true in starting their successful microbrewery and providing a fun and engaging space for the community to hang out in while drinking quality craft beer. (This is part 1 of a 2-part mini series. Part 2 (click here to view) looks at the details of renovating their 1500sf space in a strip mall to include a 60 person sitting area, and describes their methods of operating the BREWHA BIAC all in one complete brewing system on a brew day.)

The first five weeks of opening 3 Dogs has been everything we hoped for and a whole lot more, definitely not what we were expecting. There was a lot of things that were unexpected but they're positive things. Our growth has been moving a lot faster than we thought it was going to be. Basically within a few weeks we were at where we thought we'd be after a year or two. It just shows to me that there's there's a huge demand for this type of establishment in communities.

Opening a brewery as a lifestyle business

I'm Matt Glaser, I'm part owner of 3 Dogs Brewing. I'm Pam, part owner of 3 Dogs Brewing. I'm Scott Keddy, President of 3 Dogs Brewing here in White Rock. My dream of owning a brewery started when we were looking for a lifestyle business here in our community. We've been home brewing, doing beer competitions and doing well. All our friends were liking our beers and suggesting that we should be selling it. We said, we can do this. In September of last year, we started the process of incorporating our company and starting the paperwork with the liquor board, obtaining a space, doing the renovations and then starting our brewing getting ready for opening. That whole process probably took 13 months. '3 Dogs' was originally from our three dogs, Maggie, Jake and Bailey. Going through this process I've quickly realized that 'three dogs' are myself Scott and Matt, we have worked like three dogs to get this place up and running. 

Just being able to spend all day, all night chatting to people and showcasing our beer, something we made, and retirement job, it's a dream come true. It's nice to make something that you kind of aren't really sure about, and then having other people try it. When people are usually trying craft beers and they see a double IPA or a crazy amber ale they're always kind of hesitant at first and then they take that sip and they're just like 'holy!' this is the best beer I've ever had. You know it's it's nice to see people that I've grown up with in the community, enjoying the product. 

Keys to brewery success

One of the keys of the success is being able to to make good beer frankly because if we didn't make a good product, people aren't going to come back. BREWHA was instrumental in this business. It doesn't take a lot of permanent infrastructure to be able to get up and brewing. We literally unpacked and set everything up and had it not been for other delays we could have been brewing the same week. I had a lot of familiarity with the smaller BIAC brewing systems in our home brewery. It allowed us to develop a lot of beers and recipes that were so simple to scale up at that point. We simply just took what we were doing before, multiplied it by the volume, and we're cranking out top-quality beers, off the hop. It's the right tool for anybody that wants to make good quality, consistently good, beer.

Vision for opening a brewery

My vision for 3 Dogs Brewing is being met right now. Our vision to begin with was to have a place where the community would embrace, want to come enjoy their time. All of the staff, everyone here, wants to know about who's coming in. We're finding out that a lot of people are told by friends, there's a lot of people coming back bringing their friends and then their friends bring other friends. One of the keys to success is just is people we're in the community. There's not many people are coming through the doors now that we don't know. This is a place where you come and tank, and bring your friends and play games. I grew up playing games. It was around talking and knowing each other. It's a reason to get out of the house and go 'hey let's go play some crib' or 'hey let's go play Jenga down to three dogs'. It's nice to have a place like this. People live in little walled off houses and cells they come here and they meet the person next door and that's something that doesn't happen normally. It's too easy to stay in your shell and not connect with people and this is a place to connect.

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