Episode 066 - Bullpen to Brewhouse

Episode 066: Bullpen to Brewhouse - Broken Bat Brewing - Tim Pauly

When his childhood dream of becoming a professional baseball player was replaced with a degree from Marquette University, he began to ask what’s next?

That started the conversation with a childhood friend and eventually lead them to Milwaukee’s first craft brewery incubator. They spent time learning the fine art of brewing, along with the business end of owning a brewery. The incubator has helped to launch several successful Milwaukee area craft breweries. This set them up for success as they began to build their small brewery into a Milwaukee destination.

Today’s guest has many great stories about the road he’s taken to get where the business is today.

Tim Pauly

Founder

Tim Pauly, born and raised in Milwaukee, WI has had a life-long love affair with the game of baseball – and more recently craft beer. Two passions that helped to birth ‘Broken Bat Brewing Co.’ in April of 2017 in his hometown of Milwaukee!

Tim and his wife Celina run Operations at Broken Bat, and having just celebrated their 6 year business anniversary, they are excited for continued growth in the best beer city in the world.

Field of Dreams

One day Tim received an email from someone claiming to have corn grown in the field from the movie, asking if he’d like to brew a beer with it. Laughing, he replied “sure,” convinced he was being catfished.

Turns out it was real. The email came from a photographer who has been involved with the Field Of Dreams for the past 30 or so years. The spoke over the phone and soon the photographer arrived with the corn. Tim and his team developed a recipe and brewed their first batch of beer. The beer was sold during the MLB game played on the Field Of Dreams.

This year Tim went back to pick up more corn to brew another beer for this year’s event. While there he was able to enjoy the park and have a few photos taken as you can see in this episode.

The Brewery Meltdown

Milwaukee, like many old cities, has a series of steam pipes that run below the streets. Steam was originally used to power machinery and heat buildings and many of those old pipes still carry steam.

One night, in the original brewery, approximately 16 minutes after their last staff member left the building one of these steam pipes burst. Tim was called by the upstairs club to let him know his brewery was on fire.

When Tim arrived, he quickly found it was not fire, but 400-degree steam blowing through a burst pipe into his business while he watched. Once the steam was shut down and everything cooled down, he was able to enter the location and assess the damage.

Basically, the only thing that wasn’t destroyed was the stainless-steel brewing tanks. Everything else had to be replaced.