Jacob McKean, Founder & Glorious Leader at Modern Times Beer, is busy plugging away to get his brewery up-and-running in Point Loma.
Can you give us an overview of your brewing equipment and brewing team?
We have a two-vessel, 30bbl brewing system from Premier Stainless. 2x30bbl & 3x60bbl fermenters, plus 2x60bbl brite tanks. Plus a ridiculously sweet 20 gallon pilot system to test new recipes and techniques. Brewing team: Matt Walsh, Head Brewer & absurdly knowledgeable guy; Alex Tweet, Brewer & Flavor Developer; Derek Freese, Brewer & Party Ambassador.
You’re nearing the end of a successful Kickstarter campaign, having already surpassed your goal of $40K. So what’s next?
Now we’re trying to break $52,375 pledged, which would make us the most backed brewery project on Kickstarter ever. If we do it, six of our incredibly generous vendors will donate a whopping $2,200 to Bike SD, an incredibly rad local advocacy organization working to make San Diego more walkable, bikeable, and livable. You can read all about it here.
You are looking to embark on some ‘social missions’ with Modern Times. Can you tell us about those?
We’re going to be pretty narrowly focused on helping San Diego catch up with Portland, New York, Los Angeles, and many other major cities when it comes to moving beyond a car-based infrastructure. We live in the most beautiful place on Earth, but due to mind-bogglingly bad planning, most of it is covered in pavement & sprawl. We’re going to help change that.
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced opening a new brewery?
Just the sheer amount of work it takes to resolve every single problem inherent in starting a very complex, highly regulated business. I don’t have any partners, so it’s all been on me to figure out every single legal, infrastructural, and logistical challenge for the past 16 months. I’m very much looking forward to a long, long vacation in the next year or two.
Do you have any upcoming tastings or brewery tours?
None on the docket right now, but if you sign-up for our email newsletter at moderntimesbeer.com, I expect to announce some shortly.
Photos via Modern Times Beer’s Facebook page