The Man with a Plan & One Very Patient Wife

Today, I’m going to introduce you to Randy Lacey and Diane Gerhart.  A lovely couple, who through raising two sons, and finding their respective niches in life, stumbled upon a hobby that has swept them both off their feet, into the ever expanding world of microbreweries.

Our head brewer started off as a Molson Canadian drinker finding his taste for craft beer in the form of a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.  A frequent traveler for his day job, Randy started exploring the world of brewpubs starting in Denver, and further expanding the tours in San Diego.  From there finding breweries in various cities became a part of his itinerary; sometimes ending up being an adventure in itself getting lost along the way.  As the years progressed, Diane and Randy would take notes on:  the building, the beers, the staff and the food if it was offered.  A few of their favorites were Arbor Brewing Co in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Lake Placid Brewery in Lake Placid, Ommegang in Cooperstown and Middle Ages in Syracuse.

The possibility of owning and running a brewery seemed like an impossibility for just the two of them until they visited Bar Harbor Brewery in Bar Harbor, Maine about 12 years ago.  Run by a husband and wife, the brewery at the time, had won medals multiple years in a row for a stout deemed better than Guinness itself.  What impressed Randy, and Diane especially, was the fact that this brewery was run out of the owner’s basement and the tasting room was a cabin adjacent to the house!  They were open two days a week from three to six, and did their own distribution.  It was upon witnessing this that Diane realized, “OK, I could do this…” because not only was it small and do-able, but looked like a lot of fun.

Randy actually only starting brewing his own beer within the last ten years, and it was the urging of his oldest son, Sam who was spending a year at home while going to grad school at Cornell.  Among Sam’s goals for the year were two things he wanted to do with his father – brew beer and visit the Chapter House and its 50 taps for happy hour on a regular basis.  The original idea was to take a recipe, brew it, and then from there tweak it one ingredient at a time, which Diane mentions, “they would end up in so many arguments over what to change next and some of their ideas were a little crazy.”  Once Sam graduated and moved out, Randy, now hooked on brewing, joined a local brew group.  It was then that Randy made the switch from using adjuncts and extracts to an all grain brewing process.  Opening his own brewery started becoming a very real idea, because his early beers were quite tasty, so why not?

Well, he at least wanted to do something with beer, he thought about a homebrew shop, or maybe a brew on premises type place, but then came up with the farm-brewery concept, which fit perfectly with Randy’s ever expanding beer related interests.  At this point in time, Randy was staring to become active with the New York Hops Alliance.  The group, at the time was more interested in reviving the New York hops industry, but showed no interest in brewing aspect of hops usage.  Randy saw the state of Colorado Breweries with their fancy tasting rooms and equated it to what he routinely saw with the local wineries.  So, Randy took a look at the New York Farm Winery law, and reworked it into a farm brewery law, sending it around.  Other versions of the law were also being sent around various parts of New York, but some portions of Randy’s version can be seen in the law that was recently passed.  Top that off with the patience of finding the land, a brewing system, luck has really been on the side of Diane and Randy since everything seems to be coming together at the right time and place.  “It has been an ever evolving dream becoming a reality.”