I know that there are a couple of you behind Wynwood Brewing. Tell us a little about yourselves.

Wynwood Brewing is very much a family operation. The owners are my father, my oldest brother and myself. I started homebrewing in college after my father bought me a homebrewing kit for Christmas one year. I’ve pretty much hooked everyone in my family to craft beer so naturally my father jumped on board and came out of retirement to help me start the brewery.

Although I consider myself a pretty good homebrewer, I knew it’s not the same to jump from a 10gallon system to a 15barrel system, so I wanted to have someone join the team that had the experience. We originally had Jim Patton, founder of Abita Brewing, as part of our team but unfortunately he passed last year. It was a tough loss for all of us. However, Jim helped us out tremendously in his time with us. Not to mention that he was a big fan of our beers, our concept and our neighborhood. Much of the brewery layout and production concept is in part thanks to his guidance.

Earlier this year though, Naga Reshi joined the team as our brewer. Naga and I sat down, talked about our visions, experiences and ideas. I tried some of his beers and knew it was the right fit. He’s been doing an exceptional job with our recipes and working on some new test batches that we can’t wait to share once we are up and running.

How did each of you become so interested in beer?

Naga: Because I love it. How is any guy interested in women? You just are, once you get the bug, that’s it, you’re done.

Luis: I guess because in my family we love libations and anything with malted barley. We’re Puerto Rican, so we find any reason to have a party, get together, drink and eat. So we drink a lot of rum, beer and scotch. In my family particularly we love Scotch, Bourbon and beers.

Are you guys mainly self-taught or were you mentored by anyone? If so, what did they teach you that stands out in what you do today?

Both I guess you could say.

Naga started in 1990 while he was doing an internship for NCR in Dayton, OH. His mentor for the internship was a homebrewer that took him to a homebrew club meeting. Quickly he started homebrewing that summer with his mentor and then reading anything he could get his hands on. From there he kept homebrewing until he saw the opportunity to open a brewpub in Brazil, in Bahia. After a few years he sold the brewpub and opened a 15HL production brewery that he sold and moved back to Miami

I’m self-taught as well, like I mentioned I started homebrewing back in college. I did learn a lot from the time that I spent with Jim. He really taught me to trust in my senses, smell and taste.

Opening a brewery is a big undertaking, what inspired you to do it? How long has it been in the works?

When I first started with the idea of Wynwood Brewing Company there wasn’t a production brewery here in town. It was the Abbey and Titanic that was it. While I was in the process Schnebly Miami Brewing got started and that really inspired me to keep pushing through. The market really is wide open and in the area we are in it can really support plenty of breweries. Not to mention that all of us have our own little niche within the beers we produce or are looking to produce.

From when I first started writing my business plan to today it’s been close to three years. It took me a while to find the funding. After the funding it took me a while to find the right location at the right price. Once we locked down the location last July it’s been permitting ever since. So we’ve been about 9 months in the process since we signed our lease. This process does test your passion and perseverance.

Is there anything in the process that you would do differently if you could?

If I were to do anything differently it would be to over budget. You can never have too much money in this kind of business. Whether it’s in equipment, construction and personnel, you could always find areas to improve and invest in. Luckily we made provisions in our budget and have been able to save here and there. I would of also allowed us more time to open. We really thought that we would have been able to open by late last year. However, we are now in spring and are still working through some of our permits. I heard nightmare stories from businesses around town about opening up but I didn’t want to believe it. So if I were to advise my fellow up and coming brewers it would be to plan accordingly and give it 10-12 months for the planning/drawings stage to permitting and construction.

When do you think you’ll be up and running?

As soon as the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County allow us! In all seriousness we are working on a June opening if all goes well with construction and inspections.

What’s going to make Wynwood Brewing stand out from other craft breweries? Are you planning any tie-ins with the local art community or other groups?

All craft breweries are standouts. We want to produce solid year round beers and be creative with our seasonals and one-offs. Being that we are in Wynwood we take brewing as very much our art and craft. We have a few sayings here among ourselves of “Know Your Craft” and “A work of Art in every glass” because we want to stay true to our craft and consider our beers our art that we want to share with our community. We will be planning on doing events during second Saturdays in the neighborhood and collaborations with other businesses. We want to continue the trend started by the entrepreneurs that are already here in the neighborhood of making Wynwood a great place to visit. It’s not like anything else around Miami.

How big of a system are you going to initially use? What’s your total capacity going to be in the beginning?

We have a 15-barrel brewhouse and will have an initial capacity of around 1,500 barrels. We are already looking at purchasing new tanks to increase capacity. We’d like to grow and not have to be pushing our beers and sacrificing the quality.

What’s your core line up going to be?

From our opening we’re going to have three-year round brews. They will be “La Rubia” which is an alt beer. Pop’s Porter, which is named after my old man because he can’t get enough of it. It’s a nice dark beer with hints of chocolate and coffee with a lighter body than most porters. It’s really designed for the Miami weather. Finally we’ll have our Wynwood IPA that we’ve been playing around with lately. We want an IPA that’s similar to West Coast Style IPA’s and a nice citrusy, tropical fruit aroma. We’ll have some test batches at the events we’ll be pouring and are welcoming feedback from everyone.

Are you planning to brew seasonals and one-offs initially or will those be something for further down the road?

We were actually sitting down this week to discuss our brew schedule for the coming year. It will all depend if we are keeping up with our orders, but we’d like to do a new beer each month. Most of these beers will be out of our pilot system and only served in the tasting room but we really want to get creative. Down the road too we’d like to have a nice barrel-aging program as part of our offerings.

I’m assuming that you are going to start out kegging everything but will you be doing any special release bottles, etc.?

Exactly, from the beginning it will be all kegs. However, we do want to offer some of our special releases in large format bottles. Down the line we are looking at canning.

One of the big trends we’re seeing is collaborations? I know its still early but have you given them much thought or made any plans?

Absolutely. The Craft Beer industry is all about collaboration! We’ve done some collaboration with our fellow homebrew clubs in Miami already. We’re also in talks with some of our local breweries in Miami and the ones that are starting up just like us to do collaborations. Aside from that, Naga has been in conversations with Pete Slosberg from Pete’s Wiked Ale to do a collaboration brew. We’re also working on collaborations with other businesses in the neighborhood such as Panther Coffee and SweetCakes in Midtown.

You have a taproom in the plans. What do you have planned? Growlers?

From the beginning we may keep it very simple as we focus on getting our recipes dialed in the main system. We are going to do growlers and towards the later part of this year we’d like to also have a snifter club. We’d also like to hold special events and have some music in the brewery. We’d like to do community organized events for businesses in Wynwood. We really want the taproom to be a place where everybody comes and gathers, hangs out and shares ideas.

Lastly, the question we ask everyone, if we were to open your fridges, what beers might we find?

Ha! Great question. I always like to ask fellow brewers what they have fermenting! Right now I have a can of Heady Topper, a bottle of Peaches IPA and a Saison that were a collaboration between Beer Snobs Ale, Opus Ales, Fourth Age Brewing, Gravity Brewlab, Misfits, Subvert Ales, Most Wanted Brewery and ourselves. Also, I have a 32oz growler of Tequesta’s Bourbon Milk Stout.

Learn more about Wynwood Brewing on their website. www.wynwoodbrewing.com