06/01/2026
We are Nine! Every year I recap the past year and make some crazy promises for the upcoming year. So if you like reading...read on.
Copper State of the Brewery Address: 2026
Did I catch a niner in there? Yep, we’re nine years old. The traditional nine year anniversary theme/gift is pottery; this seems fitting, as we’ve been carefully molding this business year after year, guiding the clay ever upwards and into the proper shape, with Patrick Swayze looking over our shoulder and breathing heavily. And sometimes the bowl or vase turns out a bit wonky. And misshapen. Sometimes it cracks, and sometimes it breaks into pieces and we have to pull the shards together and decide whether to use superglue or just start over. This last year was a year of being molded by the Potter and being refined by fire. Most things in the building broke and we had a lot of reforming and fixing to do. Some firing and some refiring, both in the figurative and literal senses of the word. But we keep sitting down at the wheel. We keep getting our hands dirty. And we might be a bit misshapen, a bit cracked, but we’re still here. And maybe we are even pieces of art. Okay, that was too deep for brewery owners. But nine, as we all learned in grade school, is a magic number. Any number multiplied by nine, when reduced to its single digits, always returns to nine. Which means you can do that cool trick with your fingers and the indents of your knuckles to help learn your nine times facts, of course. But it’s also magic in that it symbolizes the end of a cycle and the potential for a new beginning. Like nine months’ gestation ending in a messy but somehow beautiful childbirth. It has been a long nine years, and yet it has also gone really fast. We had the morning sickness of the first few years of the business. The years where people were afraid to ask if we were pregnant or if the business was just putting on a few pounds. Then the growing pains—the part where we didn’t fit into our pants anymore—but also the joys of feeling the movements of the business stretching its little limbs. And in the last few years, some discomfort as the business grows and develops, and becomes its own entity. We’ve poured our energy into it, and now we can keep introducing it to the world and we get to watch it grow. We still have to soothe it and calm it down, sing to it and feed it. But once in a while, we can just enjoy it too. Snuggle it. Nap when it naps. Show it off to our friends and family. Be proud when it sleeps through the night or gets another tooth. And pray that the baby business makes it to adulthood.
Wow. That was poetic. I even surprised myself. If you’re still reading after my analogies limped off the page and died, here are some accomplishments we are proud of during year Nine:
· Told our crazy story on three different podcasts: Business Over Beer, the Badger Beer Report, and the Brewsers Podcast. Look them up and find our episodes to hear more about the last nine years!
· Raised money for ALS research with our Ales for ALS collab beer with our friends at Zambaldi and Ahnapee. Also donated several brewery swag items to various other nonprofits and good causes in Green Bay and beyond.
· Brewed a bunch of new beers, including Star-Studded Pucker, Pinstripe Pils, Pale by Comparison, Pete’s Post Ride Ale, Stout Dark and Handsome, Cervezarita, and others.
· Enjoyed a full year of nobody driving into our building (although we almost lost a few customers to a parking lot sinkhole, so now that’s fixed too).
· Made it to the Elite Eight in the Hop Passport March Brewsanity.
· Had our first snow day ever on March 16th, 2026, and enjoyed 27 inches of snow (about five beers high).
· Fixed everything in the building. Replaced every cooler/freezer/machine/AC unit/steam jacket/tank/parking lot/espresso machine, and survived an elevator shutdown of several months while we got buff loading everything up and down the stairs.
· Continued to beautify the patio with more flowers and décor, and added umbrellas for those that don’t always want Vitamin D in great doses. Also bought a new patio speaker that was promptly stolen seven minutes later.
· Three words: nitro cold brew. If you haven’t frequented our coffee shop in the morning, your loss.
· Introduced our “Unplug Challenge”—we had some local teenagers put down their phones, pick up some hammers and saws to make our phone jails for each table. There are several challenges for you and your friends to disconnect and reconnect, and cookies are involved.
· Wrote the bulk of my new book which will come out next anniversary. Get excited for more limping analogies, friends.
And here are some of our goals for the upcoming year, things we’d like to have accomplished by the big and important Ten Year Anniversary:
· Refresh some can designs that are, I’d say, about ten years old and ready for some love and style.
· New beer trailer for the biergarten! At least new to us. We’re still not millionaires. I still drive a Honday Odyssey from 2009. And we did have to fix everything in the building last year, remember? But we’ll make it look cool, I promise. The AI showed me it could look cool.
· Introduce some new and delicious beers into our lineup. First up, if you like Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain…
· Bring back some of the first beers we ever had on tap for the 10 year party…we’re talking One Cent Wheat, Bare Brick IPA, Swift Stout, and maybe even the Northwestern Alt?
· Continue to have the brewmasters with the best hair of all the brewmasters in the land.
· Continue to clothe the good people of Green Bay with the lost and found items from ten years of being in business and collecting the things people leave behind.
· Introduce a Saturday brunch…and perhaps extend that to the other days of the week. Except for Sundays. We will always be closed on Sundays. It is good for my soul to be closed on Sundays.
· Bring back the Pluck—our homemade seltzers—and add some new flavors into the lineup. I might need your help with this one. Demand it. Make it happen. The Pluck was so good. You’d think I’d have more control over this, but I am not the one that knows how to make anything in the brewhouse. I just do the tours and name things.
· RELEASE MY BOOK! I’m almost done with the writing of it…then a bit of editing and some self-publishing. Plan is to have a book launch on our 10 year anniversary and to have it for sale thereafter at the brewery and also on the Amazon. Thanks, Jeffrey Bezos. And thanks in advance if you buy it, read it, and review it for me. I promise it won’t suck.
· Celebrate 10 years in style, which of course means we need a dunk tank. We’re starting to plan a big ol’ shindig for next June, and we hope you’ll join us. Maybe a climbing wall again, live music, book signing, special beers, picture wall of memories. Save the date for June 5th, 2027 (yes, I know that June 1st is our anniversary, but next year June 1st is on a Tuesday, so that’s dumb). Perhaps we’ll have some fireworks and go out Bilbo Baggins-style—10 year anniversary and p**f! Gone. But probably not. I’m still driving that ’09 minivan, remember?
· Continue to live out our mission: Connecting people. Creating experiences. Crafting great beer.
Thanks for sticking with us for the last nine years. Through the pangs of childbirth, the Ghost-esque pottery experience. It’s been a wild ride, but we’re still kickin’. God is good, and He continues to bless this business. We’ve got the best staff. We’ve got the best customers. We love serving you. Here’s to another year. Cheers!
