“What kind of ramshackle operation do you have here?”
This is the question that Zack Bigelow’s father asked him when he saw his son’s homemade beer-brewing equipment.
But that ramshackle operation is soon to bring both new and “dead” ales to the city of Jonesville.
“It’s kinda tattered around the edges, but it works,” Zack Bigelow, one of the three cofounders of Ramshackle Brewing Company, said. “That just kinda stuck with what we’re all about. It doesn’t have to be pretty to be functional, and we make good beer no matter the price.”
Zack, along with his wife Jessy and friend Joe Kesselring are the co-founders of Ramshackle Brewing Company, hopefully to open Spring 2016.
What began as a hobby homebrewing free ale for supportive family and friends has become a great success and a potentially new business.The brewery will be newly built in the lot between Olivia’s Chop House and Jonesville True Value Hardware on US-12. Zack said they are planning a two-story building with potentially a rooftop beer garden.
And for the trio, Sundays are brew day.
“I’ve always loved craft beer,” Zack Bigelow said. He became interested in brewing, and when a friend gave him a kit, he had no excuses.
Kesselring, who also enjoys the craft, met Bigelow in 2010.
“We started hanging out around the brew kettle, and just started making beer every Sunday that we were able,” he said. “It’s been like that for the past five years now.”
Last Sunday, Bigelow and Kesselring brewed one of their most popular ales, the Brown Ale. It is lighter bodied and a little less alcoholic than heavier malty beers.
But Ramshackle Brewery specializes in “dead” ales.
“We focus on historical beers that, for some reason or another, that have been pushed off the radar, whether because breweries in the area were scrapped for a war effort or for Prohibition,” Kesselring said.
He said that he enjoys this research side of the process: they go through historical documents or journal accounts, often less than a paragraph, that tell of old ales from earlier eras. They then brainstorm as to how the beers were made then, what materials were available, and so on.
One of these “dead” ales, the Bière de Garde, was a French farmhouse ale that was popular on large estate farms before World War I.
“They used to give that to their farmhands as the Gatorade of the day,” Bigelow said. “It was better to drink that then water. With the advent of World War I and II over in that region a lot of the farmhouses in France were destroyed.”
As far as Bigelow knows, he said, there are only four different places in France that still make the Bière de Garde.
“We thought that was something that we needed to try making,” he said. “We’ve been pretty successful and everybody likes that.”
Another specialty is the Kentucky Common, a dark and rarely-brewed ale that was popular before Prohibition, and during the time of bootleggers and moonshiners.
“It’s tricky, we don’t have recipes to go off of,” Kesselring said.
And though they have experimented with 30 to 40 different recipes, Zack said they anticipate having eight beers on tap once they launch.
“All of our beers are done by hand,” Bigelow said. “We make our own recipes and come up with the flavor profiles that we like.”
Finances are a large challenge, though, and one reason that the brewery cannot open sooner. The founders have worked with the Brewers Professional Alliance in Grand Rapids, which helps Michigan breweries open and be competitive in the business. According to Bigelow, the whole operation revolves around being 49 percent community owned. Last October, the state of Michigan passed the Michigan Invests Locally Exemption M.I.L.E., a “crowdfunding” law which would allow for new businesses to rely on community financial support. Ramshackle Brewing Company is working to become the first Michigan Brewery to start and succeed under this law.
The brewery has had various fundraising campaigns through the site Indiegogo, where community members can donate and receive “perks” such as T-shirts, beer glasses and more. Another campaign is scheduled for October 13 at Olivia’s Chop House. They currently have reached half of their goal of $250,000, and are hoping that this next campaign will get them to 49 percent community owned. Then they can receive a loan and begin construction.
“It’s all because of Jonesville,” Jessy Bigelow said. “They are a growing city. We want to be part of Jonesville up and coming.”
Jessy Bigelow, who said that the city has been supportive and open to Ramshackle Brewing, hopes that their effort to bring new growth into the community will trigger others to start new businesses. She also said that she and her husband do not plan on making a personal profit for the first year or two, but will put all earnings back into the brewery and the community.
“We don’t want to be owners,” she said. “We call ourselves co-founders because we want our community to feel like they own the brewery. We want everybody to feel like they own a piece of it and are building their community up.”
And for the Ramshackle brewers, they get to do work they love while bringing the artistic brewing atmosphere to their community.
“I’m looking forward to making beer everyday for a living,” Kesselring said. “It’s been a generational dream for my family to be part of our own business. It’s a very fulfilling way of life.”