Dragonmead - History

History

Before opening the Dragonmead Larry Channel and Bill Wrobel worked for Chrysler while Early Scherbarth worked at Ford. Channel said that their first interest in beer and brewing started with a home brew kit that was bought for Scherbarth's birthday.

“What ended up happening was, we were near death by the end of the day. It was really hard cracking grain, doing all the items. We worked 12 to 14 hours and ended up just having 10 gallons of beer at the end of that time,” Channell said. “We thought that might be the end of it, but we kept on working on it; and two weeks later when that beer came out, it tasted really good.”
- Larry Channel

After their first encounter with home brew kit, they decided to try different methods and ingredients to create new formula's and new beers.

“It got to the point where we went from three people, actually four, working 12 hours or so at a time or longer to make 10 gallons of beer, and then we were able to do, by the time we were done in about six months, one person brewing 50 gallons of beer by themselves while the other three of us sat around and drank,” Channell said. “So it worked out pretty well, and we did that by just redesigning the process over and over.”
- Larry Channel

During this time period the group of friends were looking into starting a business in the areas of computers or printing. Wrobel proposed that they start a brewery after the "trio" became familiar with beer and the process of brewing. Channel resisted the idea at first, but he later decided to join in. A year after proposing the idea the partners opened Dragonmead in May 1998.