Interviews

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1/31/05: Emerson Haines, planned brewer and driving force behind Destiny Brewing: 

I talked briefly to Emerson Haines yesterday (1/31/05) about the Destiny brewpub he’s working on opening in Phoenixville. Emerson is plain-spoken, a Pennsylvania native, and his story sounds like a classic small business start-up. The brewpub won't be open till late spring, but things are rolling along.

Emerson: Yes, I’ve been a homebrewer for about, oh, 15 years.

I’m originally from West Chester, but I live in the Lancaster area, a town called Willow Street.

Okay! I’ve been living in the Lancaster area for around 20 years.

Well, I have a fraternity brother, Tim Kelly, who’s from Phoenixville. He lives in West Chester. He knew I was interested in a brewpub, and he was looking for a real estate investment. When he bought the old Moose Lodge, he kind of had me in the back of his mind. I’ll be renting most of the building.

Right. Two floors and a basement. The building’s cool, built in 1917. Tim’s committed to bringing it back to its former glory. The place is huge. There’s a third floor that’s empty right now. The brewpub’s going to be in the basement, it’s a great basement. The first floor will be a grille, similar to a Fuddrucker’s, but with beer. Tim will be running the grille.

I’ve pieced together wine-making equipment. My brewkettle is an old 200-gallon bakery pot. Hey, as long as it boils wort, right?

I’m doing four-barrel batches. I’m using the wine fermenters. I hope to have 7 beers on tap. There’ll be two mainstream beers, a light beer and a golden ale, for the mainstream drinkers. Gotta have them covered. We’ll have those two upstairs in the grille as well. Then downstairs, we’ll have a pale ale, an IPA, an ESB, and a stout, and the specialties, the seasonals. Plus we’ll have two beer engines. Whenever I make a batch, I’ll pull off a couple of kegs for conditioning.

The original goal was April 1. If everything falls together perfectly, we could still hit it. More realistically? May or June.

That’s a plus. I look at that as a plus. We’ll be different than they are. They’ll pull business into the area; Phoenixville will be the place to go for a brew. People will be able to come to town and hit two or three different places. I’m not worried about it.

Good attitude! Good luck to you, Emerson.

Thanks.

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