So You Want to Start a Brewery?: The Lagunitas Story

Launching a new brewery is no walk in the park. America has been a hotbed for craft brewing for quite some time and this rising tide of recent years has made opening a successful brewery a little more feasible than before. But starting a brewery is still an immense and tiring challenge and author Tony Magee of Lagunitas Brewing spills his brewing startup knowledge for all to hear in this book.Anyone who has tried to start a brewery will relate to the contents of this book. The author faced one obstacle after another, ranging from state regulations to tax payments to problems with maintenance and accelerated growth. These, and other problems like them, are covered in the pages of this book and the author is very good at discussing his many highs and lows, with many funny moments along the way.I have never owned or operated a brewery. I’ve been a beer writer for some time, but never a brewery owner or even a brewery employee. However, I can still relate to the many problems the author faced while he led his company to success. With the financial issues, I can understand fully what the author went through during those lean years. I, too, have been faced with the frustrating situation where the only cash available was the funds needed to cover the payroll. I’ve been there, and I know how difficult and sometimes unbearable this can be.Besides money, this book is abundantly clear about the other problems a startup brewery faces, like naming beers, legal challenges, beer contamination, maintenance cost, and general growing pains. As you read the book, your admiration grows stronger with each passing page. Many people would have lost their cool, thrown their hands in the air, and sought out a more stress- free way to make a living. But the author and his crew preserved. They looked at every mistake as a learning opportunity, and continually improved, driving Lagunitas brewing to the top of its class,.Breweries are one of the most difficult businesses to start and operate successfully. Author and brewery owner/founder Tony Magee has made a great name for himself as the man behind one of the most successful craft breweries in history. So You Want to Start a Brewery is a cool, informative, and often witty read about what it takes to succeed in the brewing business and it’s a book all brewery personnel should read.

Tony Magee is the bad boy of brewing. I've read several business books and several others on brewing. This book nicely ties the world of brewing together. One thing that I can say is a take home message here is that if you do start a business you need to go in it with the right people and you need to bootstrap, bootstrap, bootstrap. I love this guy's story. You don't even have to like beer to appreciate all the mistakes he's made. While I'm a home brewer, and I've run a businesses before, some of his problems will hit home... like his issue of making beer that didn't taste right and then finding out he was using a German Altbier Strain instead of a common American Ale Strain. Another issue which I found perplexing was that his business was growing and he couldn't maintain it. Every time he hired someone new, they would take a chunk of his profits away. How you can grow and not be profitable? They don't talk about that in a lot of business books--but Mr. Magee refused to give in.It is truly a poignant story of how one man from Chicago moved out to California--got bounced around by various big banks and how he learned his lessons the hard way. I love beer. I love brewing. And for a time... I was seriously considering quitting my job and just running a gastropub, or a microbrewery full time...I've changed my mind. After reading this book, my day job doesn't sound so bad. I will always, always, always support craft beers and now I know why craft beers have a higher price tag. They are made with such quality, such heartache, that these guys break their backs day-in, day-out just so we can truly savor the best ingredients made from the best quality.If you love beer, you'll love this book.If you love business, you'll learn from this book.If you love craft beer, you'll love the story of Lagunitas.

In the last four years, Tony Magee (Lagunitas), Sam Calagione (Dogfish Head) and Ken Grossman (Sierra Nevada) have all written books about how they built their highly successful businesses. All three men impress me as extremely intelligent, highly creative, a little outside the box and really passionate about brewing great beer.For me, Magee’s book was the most entertaining to read. From the strangest “Fauxword” (foreward) I’ve ever seen until the last page, Magee’s out-there creativity is fascinating. He comes across as an authentic and funny guy who enjoys telling stories. He admits his tales wander (“But I digress,” “once again, uh, I digress.”), but I think he purposely allowed that. I mean, the guy’s super smart, he quotes heady writers, and he writes well himself. Magee, or someone else, could have cleaned up the digressions if he had wanted that. They reflect the man and his M.O.I was a little surprised at how closely Magee skirted the law on a couple of matters (no spoiler details) and how forthright he was in writing about things.If you’re planning to open a brewery or want to grow an existing one, the book really isn’t a business plan as the title seems to imply. Still, it’s worth reading about Magee’s successes and mistakes. If you happen to be a craft beer-drinking musician, you really need to read this book. Magee, the musician in heart, soul and formal training, can relate almost everything in life to music. As a craft beer enthusiast, homebrewer and beer blogger, I laughed a lot and learned a lot. The only thing better than reading the book would be to sit down with Magee over Lagunitas brews and listen to him talk, sing and play his guitar.

This is an autobiography of an iconic figure in the craft brewery business of california and a story of success that built over a period of twenty years. Great beerif you like, thinking of brewing for a living etc. but also a good business book, and entertaining read and a book about triumph over hardships along the way. I have an inbterest in beer, brewing and business, so this book resonated with me: I even marked a few paragraphs as I read, but it also caught my attention to such an extent as to put aside all other reading until I finished it. Ultimately, it is a book about one man's passion for something - beer in this case - and how an early life of failures and inability to fit in a settle, turned into a kind of anarchic drive for success that was disciplined, focused and determined, albeit different. In the end, it is the difference that makes the difference. Great reading.

I rarely leave reviews - but I've just finished this book and it's fantastic. Great memoirs from an exciting and funny man. It's made me want to fly all the way out to the states to meet him and have a pint together.Don't expect a "how-to" but it certainly helps you understand the potential pitfalls and joys of starting an running a brewery.

Funniest book I read in a while. Tony has a great voice and way with words. Inspiring for anyone thinking about becoming a brewer or just likes drinking Lagunitas beer.

On time and as advertised

Tony discusses his obstacles on how he started Lagunitas, and it is a great read, but if you are looking for a book that you want technical information on how to start a brewery this isn't it. A lot of the challenges he faced wasn't so much with brewing beer, but rather everything around it, employees, supply chain, government and regulations, etc.Some of the content is useful to know as many people are going to experience the same walls, however I question the entire chapter on his difficulties with the law when smoking pot in the brewery. There could have been a chapter that actually added some value such as scaling recipes, or cost involved of the entire supply chain process.