A How-To Guide in Reverse, New Braunfels Owner Shares More Struggles in Revised Book

There was still more that could be shared. That was the reason Kelly Meyer sat down to revise the book he had released in February of 2020.

Now, with a slightly new title,​ ​How NOT to start a Damn Brewery​, has an additional 20,000​ words, 10 graphics, two comic strips and more topics that were not approached in the first edition.

“I added more of my stories, tackled things like Trademark law, COGS forecasting, base grains and the Communications Decency Act,” said Meyer, the owner of Texas’ New Braunfels Brewing. “Things I felt were missing and important to the topic of ‘What can go wrong.'”

A year ​and a half ago, ​Meyer released a self-published book​ (How NOT to start a F@ck!ng Brewery: Ten Lessons From The Front Lines of The Craft Beer Industry)​ to help other breweries in his bind, or ​for ​breweries-in-planning, ​to help them ​understand some of his failures and what to learn from.

There are ​also ​a lot of parallels for spirits and wines and just general production issues overall.

“People outside the industry have read it and some business lessons are universal,” Meyer​ previously told Brewer​, who began writing the book after sitting down ​a few years to make a list of what he had done wrong since opening the brewery in 2012.​

When the brewery first opened, Meyer had his central Texas brewery (located between Austin and San Antonio) making exclusively German Wheat styles, like Dunkel, Hefes and variants from there. Since late 2017, the brewery has flipped to a niche market of mixed cultures only.

First and foremost, the book needed editing and organizing so ​Meyer did that​ did that.​”The day I released the first edition I was proud that I wrote a book, even though I knew it needed more,” he said. “This is the book I set out to write and I’m uniquely proud of how it has evolved.”Meyer has also started a podcast by the same name to share stories of the beer business.

“The purpose of the podcast is to multiply and amplify the message by highlighting that my situation is not unique,” he said. “There are thousands of breweries that are in worse shape and thousands more about to collapse in the next few years.

“Not only do they need a voice, the public needs to know that this industry is hungry for scalps and they had better get their shit together.”