How Two Childhood Friends Built Lawless Coast Brewing in Santa Rosa Beach

What does it take to turn a childhood dream into a thriving craft brewery? In this episode of Panhandle Pulse, host Chuck Asbury sits down with Chris and Josh, the founders of Lawless Coast Brewing Company in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, to discuss their incredible journey from home brewing enthusiasts to brewery owners on Florida's Emerald Coast.

The conversation begins with the origins of Lawless Coast Brewing, a dream the two friends first discussed as teenagers before they were even old enough to legally drink beer. Chris and Josh share how a life-changing accident, career frustrations, and a passion for craft beer pushed them to finally pursue the brewery idea years later. They recount their early days brewing beer in a kitchen using simple homebrew kits, learning through trial and error, and producing batches they now laugh about but were once proud to share.

Chris and Josh dive deep into the realities of opening a brewery, including navigating construction delays, equipment shortages, county permitting challenges, and the lengthy licensing process that delayed their opening for years. They explain how they continued refining recipes throughout the process, allowing them to launch with a strong lineup of beers once the doors finally opened.

The founders discuss how they create unique beer styles, name their brews, and balance creativity with consistency. They also share the stories behind some of their most popular beers, including Triple D, Uncle Ed's Irish-style ale, and several movie-inspired creations that reflect their personalities and sense of humor.

Beyond beer, the episode highlights the importance of community involvement and local partnerships. Chris and Josh discuss hosting charity events, supporting local schools, working with organizations like Bed 4 Me and Shelter House, and creating a gathering place where locals and visitors can connect. They explain why they view their brewery as a modern version of a traditional public house—a community hub rather than just a place to grab a drink.

Whether you're interested in craft beer, entrepreneurship, small business ownership, or life on Florida's Emerald Coast, this episode offers valuable insights, entertaining stories, and practical lessons about perseverance, friendship, and building something meaningful from the ground up.

Topics Covered:
• Starting a craft brewery in Florida
• Homebrewing and recipe development
• Overcoming business and permitting challenges
• Craft beer culture and brewing science
• Community involvement and charity partnerships
• Entrepreneurship and small business growth
• Santa Rosa Beach and Walton County development
• Future plans for Lawless Coast Brewing Company

Follow Lawless Coast Brewing Company:
Instagram: @lawless.coast.brewing
Facebook: Lawless Coast Brewing Company

Subscribe to Panhandle Pulse for more conversations with local business owners, entrepreneurs, community leaders, and the people helping shape the future of Florida's Panhandle.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to the Pain Handle Pulse, the show that dives into real challenges and honest conversations shaping the Florida pain handle. I'm your host, Chuck Asbury. Each week we sit down with the people who make our community strong, sharing real issues, real conversations, and no filters. Hey guys, welcome back. Penny and Paul's got two great guests today. Got Chris and Josh from the Lawless Coast Brewing Company here in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. Guys, welcome to the show. Thank you guys. Thank you, Red. Yeah. So how did you guys uh start uh Lawless Brewing?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

We started talking about opening a brewery as teenagers.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

We weren't old enough to even drink beer, but we were already focused on it.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

And then uh was it like seven years ago? About seven, eight years ago, I had a really bad accident. I had been working with a family construction company and heavy equipment mechanic and and uh heavy haul truck driver for them. I had a really bad sporting accident, called him from a hospital bed, and uh was like, hey man, that's not looking like I'm gonna be able to go back to doing that type of work anymore. You remember that brewery idea whenever we were kids? And he had been having some problems with his work. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

And uh was just fed up. And I was like, hell yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yeah, that's go. So one thing led to another, and here we are. We started we started brewing in my kitchen back in Destin. Did a couple of those little like the the dry malt extract beer kits. Yeah, little cut.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

The glass jars and the filtration system from their sun beers. And uh yeah, it took about seven years, but here we are.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Yeah. So had that first batch go out. I remember buying those. I got one of those as a Christmas gift for my wife where you get the glass bottle and the fermentation, and then you put it in the fridge. Mine was like chunky milk.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

It was compared to what we're making today, it was terrible.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

We were we were we were very excited about our first beer though. Okay, and we tried to share it with everybody. And then uh we messed up one beer early on. It was uh it was a big IPA clone, and uh I had uh the the fermenter exploded inside of the inside of the refrigerator and everything. It was a mess, man. Those first few batches were not we were so proud of them.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

We like brought bottom bottles to Idle House.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

They're like, oh yeah, that's a beer.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

So technically it was a beer, but was it really a beer by definition? Yeah, I'd be embarrassed to serve it today. Very much so. So how many iterations did you guys go through creating that?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

So there's uh there's a couple times where I'll make a recipe and and uh it just works. Sometimes uh something weird, a little bit off-color. We'll do a smaller batch of. And I used to have it was a 10-gallon system, and we were fermenting in uh five-gallon buckets, so we would be able to split it and do a little bit different on on each one and then taste and and go through there. What do you think? Right. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, but uh let's see, that I think the the the one that I changed the most was our original pale ale, and uh we don't even brew that one anymore.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

It was kind of a clone of Sierra Nevada, yeah. Um and uh we just did that, played around with that as home brewers, and uh I still haven't gone back to pale well, I have one pale ale now. It's uh sitting back there in a bright tank.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

That's coming since I was not even out yet.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

I guess a lot of them have been tweaked a little stuff, but there haven't really been any like ground up, you know, redoing the entire recipe for any of them, I don't think.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Yeah. So just a lot of trial and error and testing through the first phases of it you guys got where you already know. But yeah, we kind of tasted all the way through the process and tasted on our taste buds, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

We try to make beers that we enjoy drinking, and uh it's worked out that people enjoy them too. Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

So going from back when you were testing them at your your your house, creating this, you come together and say, Let's create a a brewery here. What was that that like the steps in the process and the journey to do that?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

So we lucked out and my family owns the property here, so uh this was kind of a shoe-in for us. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

It was always the plan to be here.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

And then uh this construction took way too long. Uh tons of construction delays, equipment it just all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Uh so I had cleared the property about a month before COVID hit. Okay. And we started bringing in fill dirt during COVID. And so it was it it felt like one step forward to two steps back for years. Yeah. We finally got it.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Something like that. To a completely empty warehouse. Yeah. There was nothing in that wall, none of this was here, but it took three years to get done. And then it took us about what a year and a half or about a year to do all our stretch, like put in slot drains and build the bar and cooler and all that.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Just under a year, I think. And then licensing took almost a year itself. That was uh that was kind of a nightmare.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah, so it looked just about the way you see it now since October of 2024. Okay. And it was just a cool man cave where him and I would come hang out every day uh until August of 25. All right. When we finally managed to open it.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

Yeah. And now that was because so construction delays, but again, in the warehouse space here, and uh construction does take quite some time here in one county, but uh was there a lot of delays in the licensing process? That that took a very long time, man.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

The county took forever.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Yeah, there was there was some misunderstandings on a few things and and uh they just uh kind of pushed it off to the side until our lawyer called them. Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

So like daily stayed on them. But it took the county nine months, it took the state like ten days. Okay. It was almost immediate. And it took the Fed about a month and a half, yeah, which is lightning days for the federal government. So yeah, so the biggest biggest majority of delay was through county process. Yeah, yeah. But we when we finally managed to open our first day went off great.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

And all I did was post a picture of the or a little video of the open sign turning on.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

And uh we probably had 150 people come through that. Yeah. No notice at all. Just a post of the open sign on social media. Are you familiar with that 3898 Road Rage? Yeah. Yeah. Uh we made friends with them and said they shared that, and I think that's what really kind of blew it up. Okay. They have a lot of reach. They have a ton of uh audience in there.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's uh that's a big group.

unknown 6:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

So it's good to add to that to uh everyone's following it because there's always pictures of the tourists that are down here doing something silly, or slogan was doing something silly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Well, and you get better traffic updates on that than you do from uh like the sheriff's clays or any of that. Right. It's faster.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

Yeah. I think my wife checks it most of the time to see if my son or I'm on there than anything else.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Like I just go up in there and see if any of my friends or someone on there.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

So, what was the hardest part in creating the the whole brewery? So if you go back to give somebody that's got the idea of, I mean, back early in 2000, mid-2000, everybody started doing microbrewing, and that was the big wave now. But it what was the biggest hurdle that you guys had creating this business?

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Outside of the licensing and extraction stuff. Good question, man.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

I mean, we had we had equipment delays in there. We had one thing that was supposed to be delivered in three weeks and it took them four months. It was just kind of a kind of a nightmare the whole way through. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

I think the luckily through that process, we were able to keep homebrewing. So we did have a bunch of recipes just ready to go once all of the big equipment was ready. So we didn't really have to do much brand new recipe development to open. Okay. So we already had a lot of it. I guess we did kind of have to stomach some relatively unpleasant fears as we were learning, but we're not the types of dump stuff that I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Yeah. So was it easy to take the homebrewing and just mass scale it uh when you came in here? Was there a little bit of learning curve behind that as well?

SPEAKER_00 7:42

So there is some uh some computer software that I've used uh throughout the homebrewing process, and it's it's uh been able to bridge the gap in in my understanding gap, uh, because like I'm I'm just one of those people that whenever I get interested in something, I can't get enough information, but even still, I I'm still learning at every step of the process. So I was using computer software, and I've had to do a little bit of a tweaking on that because it'll get you in the ballpark, but it's not perfect. So that was kind of fun uh learning how to do all of that, scaling up and and uh the percentages of everything, and it was a fun little math problem. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

So overall it's been learning process from the beginning of it, starting small, and then building into where you guys are today. So how many beers do you guys have on tap that are yours?

SPEAKER_01 8:26

There are like nine of there right now.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Uh I think all in though, we have what, probably 15 or 16.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

I think I'm over 20 some recipes now. I've got a whole bunch of stuff some dice. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

I think we've I think we've done about 16 or so. Yeah, I think so. We got two more better or one more brand new one coming up at Pale. Okay. Yeah, he's got a bunch of recipes that we haven't even went through.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

So I spent uh all day a couple of days ago. Uh I had an idea for a specific type of beer, and I spent all day researching and building a recipe. It was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

Is that where you get enjoy from? You're sitting there going to come up with creativity.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

It sort of gives you your own realm to do it. Yeah. So beer to me is science, art, and history in a glass. And those were my three favorite subjects in in school. And uh so I get to study, I get to do a little history lesson, and then I get to I I get to use my expression to come up with what I think is the best representation of that style. Science, art, and history in a glass.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yeah. That's really good. I like that. A lot of it comes to us just like sitting at a bar or two, though. Like, dude, you know it'd be fun cool, and whatever it may be, what do we come up with that way?

SPEAKER_00 9:38

There's a bunch. Oh, dude, there's been so many things that I've come up with recipes sitting in bars and then forgot them. Wrote them down on napkins and then left a napkin there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, I think that's kind of where Blue Magic came from.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Yeah. Yeah. Blue Magic came from us.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Light brown ale.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Okay. Yeah, that that came from talking about a movie sitting at a bar.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah, I just watched American Gangster. That's the heroin you saw.

SPEAKER_03 10:08

Is that where you came up with a name from it?

SPEAKER_00 10:10

And uh so I did a little digging uh while we were sitting there drinking, found out it was called it was uh brown sugar heroine from Vietnam. So that's a a brown sugar brown ale. Okay. We should note that there is no heroin in this. Right, we did it. Yeah, for SEO thing.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

It's just a reference to a movie.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Yeah. There's a couple movie references we've got. Uh Dr. Schultz, that's uh Django. Yeah, Christoph Waltz's character from Django. We've had uh we've had a couple other movie reference ones up there.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Sergeant Stiglitz from uh Glorious Bastards. Yeah. I guess we're Tarantino fans. Yep, yeah. Let's start to put that reference together as the three that you named. Well, a lot of it we either have the name before we go in or we make it and then we'll drink a few of it, a few of them, and just talk shit. And whatever makes one of us laugh the hardest is usually the name we go with. Okay. So there's a handful up there like that. You wanna you wanna explain Uncle Ed's? Uncle Ed. So Uncle Ed was the very first all-grain beer we did. Okay. It's an Irish style, it's our oldest recipe. And we brewed it on Election Day 2020. So Election Day. Yep. And then that kind of evolved into E D other jokes. We just needed something else to put on there. So, like, well, that's our Uncle Ed. The first like logo I made for it was uh was a spoon that in half. But it's Humber Simpson on the board, but that's not really related. Okay, like compared to the spoon correct. Well, we let our artist kind of do whatever he wanted on that, and that's what he came back with. Okay. I think the bent spoon's funnier, but yeah, the bent spoon is funny. I can't draw it.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

So of all your beers you can trade, what's the the best name that you've come up with or the funniest one that you've got?

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Triple D. Triple D is a Latin American lager. Okay. And uh my wife was like, you have to name a beer after. And we were brewing that one at the time. Okay. Okay. So I did. People that know her will come in here and be like, I have Nicole's beer. And that's been that's probably our second best seller. Okay. Number one. Uh Roscoe's hazy IPA. Okay. Which we're out of at the moment. It went off this past month. Yeah. Month and a half. So we're out right now. But that one's named after my old dog. And he had a bad eyeball when he got older, that's why it's a hazy IPA. You know, it was originally spelled E Y E P A, but people be like, I'll have the wepa.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

Wepa? Yeah. Y'all don't deserve my funny.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Once you run out, again, how long does it take to rebrew all that? So since you just ran out, is that a couple week process?

SPEAKER_00 12:42

It could be about a month, uh, is about normally what it takes. Okay. For IPA. Yeah. Uh some things I can push around and push out in about three weeks. Low tide lager took two and a half months. It just didn't want to clear. Okay. Uh all the all the yeast stayed in in suspension, and it was just that one took a long time for it to loggers take longer than ales anyway.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

But to do like these really nice light ones, you gotta let them clear up so they're pretty.

SPEAKER_03 13:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Because I sell better that, but yeah. It looks nice and crisp in the glass, and it just takes longer. So loggers take longer than ales always. So we're kind of learning how to how to balance all that.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

And you guys are making a whole different variety.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

You're not just standing with IPAs, you're not staying doing we got German stuff, we got Light American styles, stouts, IPAs.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Some English stuff. Yeah. Yeah. How many beers can you brew at a given time? So I've got three fermenters back there. Uh so I can do three back-to-back brew days. And then uh depending on what beers go in there, as soon as tanks open up, I can get back in there and do more brewing.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Okay. There could be five back there at a given time. So I have two bright tanks as well.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

So there's a I guess there's a holding tank while the loggers and everything were sitting in before you can see.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

So the fermenters is where all the the yeast do all its work. Um you cold crash those, let the yeast settle out, and then we move everything over to a bright tank, and that helps clarify, and that's where we carbonate.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

So that's usually the carbonation and clearing parts usually faster than the than the fermentation.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

So are you doing uh cans as well or just everything on tap right now? Everything's on tap right now. We do have uh a canned seamer, so we can do like uh the 32 ounce prowlers. Okay. But uh no like six packs or anything yet. Is that a plan for the future to start?

SPEAKER_03 14:21

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

We'll get there.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Okay. So is that over the next few few years or next five years or uh the vision of uh what's your vision for the place in the next three to five years? What'd you like to see it happen if all the cars lined up?

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Later this year, we'd like to get into distribution to be able to get the bars and stores and stuff. Okay. Uh try to get through summer. We just don't know what the demand in here is going to be, and we don't want to, you know, commit to something that we can't follow through with. Right. Um, but then the five-year plan, I mean, ideally we want to be this entire building. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Have a a lot more fermentation space. I'd really like to start making meads and and ciders and things like that as well. So that'll that's in the cards eventually, hopefully in the next five years. Which is a different license, and we're not super anxious to get that.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Yeah. So to make cider in that is different from brewing. So there's wine. Okay. And yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

So uh cereal malt beverage is what we are allowed to make, is anything that you get 51% of your fermentable sugars from grain alone. And uh there's not a lot of grain and and uh and mead. Right. So that that's uh that's where that classification stops. Okay. Yeah. And uh you'll need more floor space. Yeah, that one's probably closer to 10 years down the road. Big plans. Yeah, big ideas.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Now you're looking in the meantime to be on tap in certain restaurants around the area here, or just still work on can distribution next first.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Hopefully, uh hopefully can or excuse me, keg distribution going into the bars will come first. Okay. Uh hopefully this fall, maybe next spring, and then uh cans soon after that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

And so we found this place because my wife plays Mahjong here with all the whole bunch of girls. And then a couple weeks ago, you guys had uh the crawfish boy out there with North Bay Cigars as well. So you guys do a lot of events in the area here. We try to just do some fun stuff.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Uh the mahjong's every Monday. Yeah. They're they're locked in. Yeah, they that's a good group, man.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Every Monday here and there, Tuesday somewhere else. It's a rotating day of the weekend here somewhere. Yeah. Have you guys ever played? No. Okay. I played a few times with my wife.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

I have no idea how it works.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

They've offered to teach me, but I've been bartending since. Yeah, we did we did the coughish spoil, we've done uh some uh kind of pop-up charity stuff with the road rage people. Yep. Uh we actually have one June 13th. We're doing another one. Uh they're starting like a uh dog rescue thing.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

And we're gonna do a thing to try to try to help them make some money to fund that. Yeah. Uh but we've done one for uh a Bed for Me. Yep. Are you familiar with that?

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Yep, they were on the show uh a few months back.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yeah, we did a thing here for them. Uh did uh shelter house with them. And yeah, that's a lot of that. And we've done a lot of stuff for the schools too. We hosted like the South Walton several sports banquets. Okay. We've done the Christmas parties for the teachers from uh the high school and the Mother Coast Middle School.

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

It's like the principal from Denmark Coast Middle School's band is playing here tonight.

SPEAKER_03 17:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

But they're awesome.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Yeah, it's the principal, and I think it's like the resource officer.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Okay. Uh they have to have a funny band name then, right? It's called Solar Flare. Okay. I thought it'd be a little bit funnier for education-wise. They're they're really fun.

SPEAKER_03 17:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

One thing that you just picked up on that that everyone pretty much has been part of the show with, especially in this community, is you guys give back to our charities and events. And that's been a huge thing that I've noticed with all my guests. Is that something you guys set out to do from the beginning or just felt called to continue to like support the community that you're in?

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Kind of always are not necessarily in this forum, but we always wanted to be like part of the community, yeah, as opposed to just you know in the community. And uh I think that's a great way to do it. Yeah. And uh we get a we have a really good like local group of people around here that like to support. So uh we've just kind of facilitated. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's cool to you know be a part of the community and get back. Right, right. And we're in a cool situation where we're able to.

SPEAKER_03 18:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

So I I I I always thought we'd do something, I just didn't know exactly what it'd be doing.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

And it seems like you actually didn't plan for that. I mean, we planned from it from the beginning in there, but you were able to follow through with that earlier in your business plans than when you guys created the step on here instead of waiting. Like you see a lot of companies that are like, well, until I get to this next year, then I'll start doing the community stuff. But every person I've talked to in the community living here for 10 years is they've always done it from the beginning. And it's a benefit to the community and and to you guys as well.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

For sure. It's a great way to get people in the doors. But uh it's it's been cool. We've done like the drives with you know, pillows and bedding and stuff uh but for me. Yep. And uh they filled a truck, and yeah. The shelter house thing, we thought he was gonna have to make a couple trips to get everything. Wow. They brought all kinds of stuff for them. So, you know, it's just a good way to get the community involved. Yeah, and it I mean it's good for us, but it's bigger than that. Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

And beer. Yeah. And like looking back through the history of of of pubs and drinking, I mean, the pub comes from the term public house, and uh just always felt like something like this should be kind of a community center almost.

SPEAKER_03 19:27

Yeah. No, that's pretty cool. That's good thinking. We try. Yeah. We have good ideas occasionally.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Once or twice. Well, that's uh that's the thing. You go out, you test, you test the idea, you you you make it work. If it doesn't work, you try something else. That's right. So for people in the area that's there's not very many brewing companies specifically here. You guys now might be the third one I know of, trying to think who's left.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Idle us moved in at their pomp folly used to be. Yeah, that's right. They moved over that way. I think they brewed there. I don't think you're wrong about that. Don't don't don't all meet that. But otherwise you gotta get a desk in a freethor or an ice fill.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

And then it's good because being here in the area gives us locals and the community and tourists down in here a place to stop by. And you guys have a great, amazing open space up in here, which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Got a lot of families to come through. Yeah. It's been a cool space, man. I want to keep doing that.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

So do you come up with the creativity for your social media accounts and everything you post on there? Who's behind the brains of that?

SPEAKER_01 20:24

It's mostly my wife. Okay. I do some of it, but uh I don't I don't think I have a good mind for social media though. So it's mostly her. We need to we need to do better. I think we could do more. It's just not something that's present in my mind very well. Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

And it doesn't seem like that's something that's holding you guys back by not pushing to it right now. But it could elevate more.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

I think more. Just need to do it. Goofy videos. Right. We have lots of goofy ideas, so we should start filming them.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

Yeah. And do you have any old footage from when you were tasting your original beers? That's what you should start posting out there nowadays.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

I really have some like old pictures, but it definitely looked like Okay. Yeah. It's just the pictures of the brew day, maybe a picture of the pot here or there. Yeah. Uh there's certainly pictures of us drinking beer. Oh yeah, yeah, we could easily find that.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

But not for the beginning where stuff didn't look quite as right.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

He didn't document very well. Okay. It just didn't look like anything, you know. It's just a picture of boiling water, it's not really that interesting.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Right. So you started out with again, when I remember doing that, it was like you had a boiling water and then you put a bag of hops or whatever inside there. That's Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

The Maltex track. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

That's probably where I messed everything up when I started doing that at the beginning of the whole process.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

I don't even know where we messed up yet. Yeah. It turns out we're better doing it with full grain than uh the next year.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Yeah. Yeah. It turns out much better. Yeah. A little bit more control of the entire process and kind of push it one way or the other. Not a whole lot of control with uh multex tracks. Yeah. Uh somebody else makes all of that and uh you have no control over the temperature that it was made at or anything like that. Yeah, you get a lot more control in uh all grain. And it turns out a lot better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

It's interesting too.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

Yeah. Now, where do you guys get your uh supplies and that from? Is there any way places to get that like locally from within the state of Florida, or is that something that's not really viable?

SPEAKER_00 22:16

So we have a couple of things that we have gotten uh ingredients locally. We use honey and a few things. Okay. And uh we try to get that uh that locally. We've used some fruits and stuff that we've picked, uh, and this was on the homebrew scale, but yeah, uh we've got my family has property out in the state forest, and we've got all kinds of uh blackberry bushes out there, and dewberries, I guess is what you'd call the wild ones. Uh we've gone out there and picked, I think it was almost 20 pounds of it one time for a uh for a sour we did as homebrewers. Two bitter dudes walking through the forest. Frolicking through the woods. Yeah, we did a sour with a dew berries in it. Yeah. There might be pictures of that one. I think I think uh we had somebody take a picture of us while we were holding hands and swinging the phone.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Nice photos.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Those are all great ideas to start pushing out on social media for you, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:08

I don't mind embarrassing myself.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Look back in the day and that's all it's about. Like people's gonna give a good laugh and then they're gonna come in and they can't try that actual drink, but then you tell them something else in the in the Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Yeah. You never you never you never hold hands with the homies? That's right. And go frolicking in the woods? That's good stuff.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

So I mean, based on what what you guys are doing here now with all the events coming up, we already hit on what you guys are planning for the next five years. What advice would you give to somebody that's out there thinking of starting their own business or going off to creating the anything in the panhandle here for?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

Uh it starts with the first step. You're curious, start doing homebrewing, play around, have a good time, and uh learn as much as you can and buckle up. It's gonna be a ride. Yeah. Stick with it. So there's gonna be more reasons not to than to do it.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

Yeah, just stick with it. Is there discouragement in there in the process when we went through the whole delays of the building and the permittings and the process? Yeah, like there were some low points there.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Yeah. Some days it felt like it was just never gonna happen no matter how hard we tried. Yeah. Just waiting for somebody else to come through for you. That sucks. Yeah. And that's all that permitting and everything was, and the construction in here too.

SPEAKER_03 24:21

Right on.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

You know, that we had no control over any of it. We're just sitting on our hands, yeah, waiting for it.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

The plus is it's not like you guys partnered together doing that. So you had each other to lean on and go through the process where some companies are out there doing it theirselves or some individuals, it makes it Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

And uh we've been friends since second grade.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

So uh Yeah, we met in second grade at Beston Elementary School.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

So you guys have been here y forever. Yeah, yeah. Grew up here. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Uh ever moved in any other locations or always been here? I did a little bit of moving around uh when I was a teenager. Most of the time was spent in Tennessee. Okay. But uh came home.

unknown 24:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Tallahassee for college.

SPEAKER_03 25:02

Over at FSU.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

TCC. Okay. Never quite made it to the state street. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Still was in the area. I mean, this had this area has a great draw, and everybody that is from here either leaves and comes back or stays. Yeah. Like Yeah. And people have been in all the time.

SPEAKER_03 25:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

It's changed dramatically in the last ten years. So much. It's insane. I used to come down when I was little. My sister, she lived in Laguna Beach, and there was not from Laguna Beach to pretty much destined such for that little gas station there. Yeah. And now it's uh it is insane. It's exploded.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

They paved the road out of that bottom when I was a kid. Yeah. All excited. We had this come up.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Right. No more red clay back here. You got pavement. Yeah. My tires are gonna be clean when I hit the alleyway.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Yeah. It's changed a lot now.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Yeah, it has. And it's just gonna continue to expand. I mean, the plus is we have so much state parks, so it can only change so much more, but now we're starting to build condos and yeah, upper places and the infrastructure's probably that was that was another thing that was kind of disheartening.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

We watched the apartment complex behind us. Uh they started construction after we did and finished before we did. Yeah. That was uh that was a little distressing.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

Oh thanks.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That one too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Business has opened and went out of business at the time it took us just to get going.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Yeah. No, I think that's one of the things that we I deal with too, because I built something when we moved to our house just getting a uh a warehouse built for our son to pitch, and it took forever for permitting processes in here. These developers in the area can build an entire 60 lot subdivision in a year, and the permitting process is nowhere as difficult as what my process was building up or you guys to put a process up to put a brewery in place.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

So I have some thoughts there, but it might be best to keep those too. Yeah. On any county officials thing. Well, it is election year, so it is an election year.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Yeah, we won't make any endorsements in here, Alice. I've had a couple candidates on the show, and I'd like to make sure you guys listen and you pick the right choice because we're we're don't uh we don't endorse or pick uh places on that because everyone is unique. I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I like to end one of our conversations on here is what is one of the biggest challenges that you guys see in the area, whether it be if in your own business or besides beach access, because everyone talks about that, but like anything other than that that you think about uh it could be could be try to be solved by the community. Um golf carts on the road.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

People act like they're toys and just jump out there and don't follow the rules of the road and bad things happen.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah, some tragedies have happened. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Two this week. The sheriff page shared it.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

Yeah. It needed to be something about that. I just seen on the road rage page one caught on fire somewhere. Oh, yeah. And they had to go the fire department to put it out. Yeah, the whole golf cart just golf flames.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Yeah, I saw that yesterday, I think.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

That one, yeah, the golf cart's for sure. And I don't know what the solution is, but he's light speed worker out here too.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Like this fight at 393 is a nightmare.

SPEAKER_03 28:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:10

Well, they just that's been there for a while. And then they just added the other one down there by the Burr King area, which now creates another backlog between the two because they're not synced. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

And there's no arrow with that one either. No. And there needs to be.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

I think that's probably my biggest thing in the area.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

All the stoplights on the highway 98. Right. Yeah. I think they tried to solve a problem because there's a bunch of people come from out of town, tourists, and we have these cross intersections where people stack up four cars in a cross intersection and no one can see. Yeah. And so they're like, okay, well, how do we fix that? Because everyone's getting wrecked. Let's put a light in.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Light down there was a good idea, but it's kind of the same problems as this light has. Yeah. So some kind of uh it's above my pay grade.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

I mean, I work in tech. It should be easy to sync these to synchronize these systems these days.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Anytime the government's doing something, I think you can count on something being wrong.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

The light down right before the small mart. Yeah. That turns down uh was it Goldsby Road? Yeah. Yeah. You'll sit in there for like 30 minutes until it like turns green. That's my route. Yeah. In the middle of the night, if you go or if you're going home late, like you have to back your car up and forward to make sure you like trigger the sensor.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

I get I I get down Goldsby, so I don't have to wait at it. Okay. In the mornings it can suck. Yeah. Two light cyclists get through there sometimes. Yep. Depends on when you leave. Yeah. So the area is just growing faster than the infrastructure.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

That is that's definitely the case. Yeah. And it's just can especially what's adding more to it is these the bigger condos. Like you can put a hundred people in there versus five houses and adding two hundred more cars. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Yeah, there's so much more traffic and the roads are insane. Right. We have an evacuation situation. It's gonna be a problem.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

Yeah. So so something to think of. So whoever's out figuring out that plan in our uh counties, states would look into that as well. If you need extra advice, come have a beer. I'm sure you can solve right.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

More things have been solved sitting at a bar than any other place in the world, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

There's some facts behind that. There might be. If you go look, there's some kind of world-solving solution or an end to some big epic event over drinks, over cocktails.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Do you say that 97.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot? So yeah. Oh, it's a solution. That is true. It is. Uh technically, it is.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Well, I appreciate you guys being on today. Absolutely. Thanks for having us. This is a great place. Lawless test brewing on Facebook. It's Lawless Period Coast Period Brewing on Instagram. Okay. And I'll post all those. Perfect. Well, Chris, thanks for being on today. Sure, man. Josh, thanks, guys. Yes, sir. Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you liked it, be sure to follow and subscribe. I'll leave you with this. What's the biggest issue you see in the pain handle right now? Join the conversation with me at Chuck Asbury IIX. I'd love to hear your thoughts.