Starting a Brewery with Rick Goehring – BeerSmith Podcast #282

by Brad Smith on June 10, 2023 · 0 comments

This week I welcome Rick Goehring from Walnut River Brewing who shares an interesting story of starting a production brewery with very little money. Rick has the top selling Kansas produced Craft Beer now.

Subscribe on iTunes to Audio version or Video version or Spotify or Google Play

Download the MP3 File– Right Click and Save As to download this mp3 file.

Topics in This Week’s Episode (41:59)

  • This week I welcome Rick Goehring. Rick is the head brewer and co-founder of Walnut River Brewing near Wichita, Kansas. Rick took a unique approach by building out his production brewery over a period of years with a relatively small amount of money while working full time at his IT job.
  • We discuss how Rick got started brewing and how is passion for homebrew eventually led to him starting a brewery.
  • Rick shares how he traded his home for a broken down building in El Dorado, Kansas and then lived in a small apartment in the building with his family while renovating it.
  • We talk about how he purchased his initial brewing setup with $50K in cash and then jury rigged things like his glycol chiller to make it all work.
  • We discuss some of the challenges with getting the brewery open and also how it eventually evolved into a production brewery rather than the restaurant-brewpub he originally envisioned.
  • Rick shares his original lineup of beers, and we discuss how his Irish Red became the top selling Kansas brewed beer in the state.
  • Rick shares his thoughts on running a brewery from a brewer’s perspective.
  • He gives us his closing thoughts after starting a brewery on a shoe-string.

Sponsors


iTunes Announcements: I launched a new video channel for the BeerSmith podcast on iTunes, so subscribe now! At the moment it will only feature the new widescreen episodes (#75 and up). Older episodes are available on my revamped Youtube channel. Also all of my audio episodes are on iTunes now – so grab the older episodes if you missed any.

Thoughts on the Podcast?

Leave me a comment below or visit our discussion forum to leave a comment in the podcast section there.

Subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes or BeerSmith Radio

You can listen to all of my podcast episodes streaming live around the clock on our BeerSmith Radio online radio station! You can also subscribe to the audio or video using the iTunes links below, or the feed address

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the blog and my newsletter (or use the links in the sidebar) – to get free weekly articles on home brewing.

Related Beer Brewing Articles from BeerSmith:

Enjoy this Article? You'll Love Our BeerSmith Software!
  Don't make another bad batch of beer! Give BeerSmith a try - you'll brew your best beer ever.
Download a free 21 day trial of BeerSmith now

{ 0 comments… add one now }

Leave a Comment

Previous post:

Next post: