Get to know
Sarah Flora, Founder of Flora Brewing
Tell us about Flora Brewing!
To tell you about Flora Brewing I think I have to tell you who I am to start. I’m Sarah Flora and I just happened to stumble into the world of homebrewing by complete accident. I was a beer nerd for years and slowly started homebrewing and posting my progress on the internet. Now Flora Brewing has become a homebrewing educational platform to learn both what to do and what not to do in your own homebrewery. I record every brew I make and let everyone see an unfiltered version of what actually happens when you’re brewing by yourself, even if you have years of experience.
What interested you about craft brewing? Why did you decide to start your own brewery brand?
I’m the type of person who has to make every hobby a job. I got my husband a homebrew kit for one of his birthdays and he never touched it. I always wanted to get into science -- my mom’s a science teacher, my dad’s an engineer -- but I went to school for art and now work for an art gallery full-time. Home brewing is an easy way to bridge creativity with science. I’ve always cooked, so it spoke to me in the same way. The brand came about very organically, after posting my homebrewing progress on instagram it blew up and working in the art world I can’t help but make logos when the mood strikes and so Flora Brewing was born!
What does your collaboration/partnership with Pilot Project look like?
Thanks to the guidance of Dan, Jordan, Glenn and everyone else on the team at Pilot Project it was a wonderful experience. I've heard many brewers say that moving to a commercial system isn't much different than brewing on a homebrew system and there is credence to that statement. I think the biggest difference was that I usually don't sparge or lauter my mash so cycling the wort over the grain for about an hour was new to me, it increases your mash time significantly. I'm used to being done with my mash in an hour or less depending on what I'm making at the moment.
What advice do you have for prospective women brewers?
Go for it. Women have as much right to be in the brewhouse as men do. After all, women were the first brewers.
What can we expect from Flora Brewing in the near future?
We are in discussion with collaborating more with Pilot Project, which is an ideal model for my goals right now in brewing. I find such value in learning from brewing professionals. I probably learned more in my day of brewing with Glenn at Pilot Project than I did for the previous year brewing on my own. I would love to release a beer in California and Washington, I spend my time between the states and want to be able to share my beer with everyone!
How can readers support Flora Brewing?
I’m always posting my progress on Youtube (Flora Brewing) and Instagram (@flora_brewing).
get to know
Azadi Brewing Company’s 2 Year Anniversary
How does it feel to have reached this milestone in Azadi’s history?
Gator: Sometimes it is hard to believe that we are two years in. It feels like just yesterday we were homebrewing in my garage. If you would have told me when we started that we would release 24 beers over the course of the next two years, I don't think I would have believed you. I can't wait to see what we can accomplish in the years to come.
Bhavik: Incredibly exciting, we are especially proud that we've done it our way - which is authentic to our Indian heritage, with a sharp focus on our hometown of Chicago and at our own pace (focusing on quality over growth). We love how we've built a community around Azadi which inspires us to continue to innovate and bring Indian culinary tradition together with American Craft Brewing.
What’s a significant memory from this past year of business that you were particularly proud of?
Gator: Being invited to pour at Rhinegeist's Rare Beer Fest was incredible. It was an honor to get to meet such talented brewers from all over the country and it felt like we belonged.
Bhavik: I have loved every event we've been a part of where we had the chance to meet folks face to face, I still remember a line that went out the door at the Museum of Science and Industry for the Beer Festival we did there. It makes it so much more real for us when we meet folks, introduce them to our brews and build a community that loves Indian-inspired craft beer.
What are your plans for the future of Azadi, maybe thinking in the context of another year from now? Any upcoming projects that you’d like to share?
Gator: We look forward to opening up our own taproom and welcoming our loyal fans to a place they can call their own.
Bhavik: We are certainly very excited to open our own taproom to bring together Indian bar bites with our beers, our taproom will honor our cultural history and this city. We also have several favorites returning along with some new beers we will introduce in 2023...our goal is to reach more and more of the Chicagoland community.
get to know
Funkytown Brewery’s 1 Year Anniversary
How does it feel to have reached this milestone in Funkytown’s history?
It feels absolutely amazing to have made it one year in this business. The last 365 days absolutely flew by as we kept busy with tasting sessions, events, and outreach. But in the short time we’ve had to reflect, we’re very proud of what we accomplished.
Before we launched in October 2021, we had a vision to create great beer focusing on palatable styles and staying away from the crowded IPA segment. We wanted to create a beer with cultural references, music references, fun label artwork with diversity & inclusion wrapped up in the design and language used on the packaging. This was all in an attempt to reach the established craft beer connoisseur while introducing newer beer drinkers to the market with beers crafted keeping their taste preferences in mind.
That vision led us to meet many amazing people, gain invaluable feedback and have a successful first year with all the beer styles we released. The first year of business affirmed that we had a good idea, that we can handle the executive work for the company and that Funkytown has viability long past this first year.
We’re really excited for year two!
What’s a significant memory from this past year of business that you were all particularly proud of?
I think the most significant memory is still winning the Brewbound Pitchslam 13 in Santa Monica, California in December 2021 (only 60 days after launching the brand). We applied to the competition the year prior, with the same go-to market strategy for promotion, beer styles and outreach, but we were still homebrewers at the time. You can’t do much with homebrew.
So in 2021, we applied again with a similar application but this time we had gone pro and launched:
Hip-Hops and R&Brew – our Flagship American Pale Ale whose label is a reference to 90’s Hip-Hop and R&B
Woo-Wap-Da-Bam – our fall/winter seasonal American Amber Ale with a beer name that shouts out a Chicago specific term used as conversational filler
Cuffin’ Season – our fall through valentine’s day seasonal Irish Red Ale which is an ode to temporary relationships that pop-up to keep people company during the cold, dark winter months
New Year, Who Dis? – our winter seasonal Oatmeal Milk Stout, with label artwork depicting a crowded gym on January 1st, with everyone overexerting themselves.
That mix of music, culture and humor allowed us to hit the pitch stage confident about our product and messaging. That release of four beers within our first 60 days displayed a seriousness and professionalism in our approach to the craft beer industry. That Pitch competition victory created a lot of brand awareness for us and set us up with a few of the larger chain retailers that picked up our product and still stock their shelves with our brew today.
What are your plans for the future of Funkytown, maybe thinking in the context of another year from now? Any upcoming projects that you’d like to share?
Going into next year we’ll have a deeper budget for more event curation, collaboration, marketing activities to deepen our concentration and relationship with the Chicagoland market. In 2023, we (the founders) aim to make Funkytown their full-time job and look for a space to open our own unique brewpub to deepen the vision and culture we’re trying to create. Opportunities have presented themselves much faster than expected in our first year, and we expect that when we are full-time Funkytown we can better take advantage of those favorable circumstances and be more available for the community that supports us.
official announcement
Pilot Project Brewing in Milwaukee
Pilot Project opened in 2019 with some pretty big aspirations. The brewing industry has massive barriers to entry that often leave creatives and the actual people that have developed this industry's rich culture without a platform to grow and evolve. We looked to other industries like music, film, and art for how they support and enable their creators and lower the barrier to entry. If you're a musician, nobody asks you to build your own recording studio to release an album. But until Pilot Project, that was the expectation that plagued our industry's creatives. So we decided to build them a recording studio.
Effective today, Pilot Project is no longer just a studio. The good people of Milwaukee Brewing Company have allowed us to purchase their beautiful facility at 1128 N 9th Street -- right in downtown Milwaukee -- and further our dream of supporting creatives in the beverage industry. Today, we get to become an independent record label... but for brewers. :)
Analogies aside, we are thankful to the brewing community for being open to our crazy little idea. We look forward to continuing our mission of supporting creativity, diversity, and innovation in our industry, and are thrilled that we get to call The Brewer's City of Milwaukee and the Craft Beer Capital of Chicago our home. It's going to take a little time, but we look forward to welcoming you to our downtown Milwaukee spot and are thrilled to keep serving the dreams of our brewers in our Chicago launchpad.
For questions or press inquiries, please reach out to press@pilotprojectbrewing.com .
Get to know
Julie Kikla, Founder of ROVM Hard Kombucha
What is ROVM Hard Kombucha all about?
At ROVM, we are all about bringing people together to live a big life, share their adventures, and drink some booch along the way! Pronounced “Roam”, we love urban hikes, meeting new people, sharing travel stories, and toasting to the beginning of a great weekend. Our mission is to craft the most drinkable, all-natural, better-for-you beverage for wherever life’s adventures take you. ROVM was launched on Earth Day, 2021, and since then, we have been crafting the most all natural, gluten free, low sugar hard kombucha on the planet. We love when people say “I hate kombucha” and we convince them to try ROVM and their eyes light up after the first sip and they say something like “not a big kombucha fan, but this was good!”
What made you want to get into the kombucha brewing space?
I have always had an appreciation for fermented foods. When I was growing up, my father would keep a garden in the summer and in early fall, we would ferment everything that we couldn’t eat. Pickles, sauerkraut, peppers, you name it, it got canned. When I moved to California in 2007, Kombucha was everywhere! It became part of my every day diet and I loved experimenting with my own kombucha. Fast forward, and when hard kombucha started hitting the shelves, I was super interested but I didn’t love the aftertaste I found in many of the current beverages on the shelves. I started playing around with brewing my own (especially after Covid when I had a lot of extra spare time on my hands!). I called up Dan Abel, co-founder of Pilot Project brewing (we worked together back at Google) and asked him if he could spare some tips on how to get my home grown brew tasting better. After he shared more about what he was doing with Pilot Project, he took my recipe and sent back some revised samples and WOW! I was blown away, it was exactly what I wanted to drink! Clean, crisp, not overly sweet but fruit forward with no “stale cheerio” aftertaste. A little idea started forming, what if we could create more of this and share the best tasting, all natural booch with the world? I got dreaming on brands, Dan and the Pilot team helped with bringing other flavors I had dreamed about like Blueberry Yuzu (inspired by trips to Big Sur) and Passionfruit Citrus (trying to recreate Costa Rica in a flavor) to life. Just over a year later, we are now in 40+ locations around Chicago and nothing makes me more proud than seeing all the ROVMERS out there sharing hard kombucha with their friends.
What can we expect from ROVM in the near future?
We have some big dreams! I always thought of ROVM as a lifestyle, and not just a hard kombucha. We are seeing that come to life with people sharing their trail guides, their adventures with us on social media, and their favorite playlists. From a product perspective, we hope to launch more flavors, different ABV and hard kombucha inspired cocktails. If you have any ideas or recommendations, I would love to hear them (julie@rovmhardkombucha.com) . Otherwise, my ultimate dream is to have ROVM huts around the world where people can hang out, gear swap, play cornhole, listen to live music, take a photography course from one of our awesome packaging photographers, and meet new adventure loving folks while sharing in some tasy hard kombucha.
What advice do you have for prospective women entrepreneurs?
Day one, or one day, you decide! I meet incredible women all the time who say “I have this idea, but I don’t know how to make it happen” and so they give up before getting going. Just start. Start doodling you brand logos, buy the URL you want you want, start the business plan, file your LLC, share your business pitch with your friends and so on. If you try to figure it all out at once it will feel very overwhelming and you may not get started, but day by day it will come together and you will figure out what you need to along the way. Last advice, find a group of women who are business owners or entrepreneurs to surround yourself with, a great organization to follow is Ladies Who Launch for a ton of tips and resources.
Any ROVM events coming up?
Yes! For our Chicago friends, join us July 28th event (Cocktails on the Lake at Navy Pier) with Lincoln Park Young Professionals otherwise find us at Pilot Project anytime (we think the back patio on a nice summer day goes great with our newest flavor Mangonada). Otherwise if you have an event you would like to have ROVM at, let us know! Huge thanks for all the ROVM drinkers out there and anyone who has tried a new craft brand from the awesome other brewers at Pilot Project!