1. Tell readers a bit about yourselves and how you got into the brewing industry.
Moonrise Brewing Company is a family business that loves community and hosting events, we were working in the brewing industry in St. Augustine and saw a great opportunity in Flagler County that didn’t have any breweries at the time so we decided to take a risk and move to a new town.
2. Moonrise Brewing Company was the first microbrewery in Flagler County and has now become the gold standard for others. What was it like getting started?
Getting started on any new project is exhilarating! You learn as you go and you make a lot of mistakes but it’s the most fun thing you can do when you create something completely new and unique out of nothing. When you are in the thick of it, you don’t realize how hard and exhausting it is but we joke now after having a family that opening a business was way harder!
3. You’ve been gracious, helping others learn the craft. What makes a good brewmaster and can anyone do it?
Brewing beer is complex and not for everyone that’s for sure. It’s an art and a science, you have to have a mechanical brain, chemistry knowledge, understanding the science of flavor and ingredients and really love it because it’s hard work and a ton of cleaning!
4. Moonrise just introduced three new flavors over the weekend. How do you develop your recipes and are they based on seasonal ingredients or just what strikes your fancy?
There are many different factors that go in to deciding what to brew, seasonality is a huge one, curiosity to try new styles is another big one and lastly just always striving to balance what customers what to drink and what we want to drink!
5. Moonrise has definitely had an impact on the revitalization of the European Village. What’s in the future for MRB?
We feel lucky to have found a location like the European Village to operate in. We are all about events so it’s the perfect space for us. We do tons of collaboration events with the other business and have more than enough space to host large events for ourselves and our community. One of the hardest parts of the pandemic for us has not being able to do events for the community like we use too so our main goal for the coming future is reconnect with locals to give them a meeting space for their events, gatherings and to reconnect again.
