Me

 

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You'll have to clean that email address up a bit, but I don't need more spam from some crawler bot. 

About the 3 Dog Brewery

The Condensed Story

This friend of mine (Rick Nelson) had told me for years that I should try homebrewing.  He was certain that I would enjoy not only the end product better than the mass market offering, but the process to 'create' beer.  Well, I agreed that it looked interesting and bought a book on the subject, Brew Chem 101: The Basics of Homebrewing Chemistry.   This book has a lot of great information in it, it just wasn't the right catalyst to get me started. 

Over time I forgot about home brewing altogether until Rick brought it up again.  I forgot what he said or what we were talking about, but he caught my interest and I decided to drive over to the local home brew supply shop.  That shop was The Brew Stop, which is no longer in business, due to the premature death of Ken Rich in February 2007.   I talked with Ken, the owner of the Brew Stop, for about 10 minutes and walked out of there with the 'intermediate' starter kit.  Afterall I had read a book so I knew everything already!  Audentia ad ignorantiam [Boldness from ignorance]  And so the education begins....

About The Name

Currently located in Spring, Texas, I started the 3 Dog Brewery in 2001 soon after I had brewed my 4th batch of beer at home.  It was at that time I figured all “good” breweries had names, so I wanted a name for mine; even if it was just a lowly homebrew operation with a pot, a bucket, and some vinyl tubing.  I kicked around a couple of names like “Branch Lake Brewery” which is the name of the street we lived on at the time.  It sounded okay and it almost stuck but it just didn’t have that catchy, kitsch I was looking for.  Like that jingle for some stupid product you may or may not buy, but you can’t get the tune out of your head.  Or, like the Geico gecko, the AFLAC Duck or the Cavemen; few people remember what stuff these characters are hawking, but they love the characters.  So, in desperation, I asked my wife if she had any ideas.  She came up with the 3 Dog Brewery off the top of her head.  She said “Well, we have three dogs, right?”  I thought it was brilliant straight out of the box.  I did several web searches, used web crawlers to scrape the internet and found no 3 Dog Brewery anywhere. The 3 Dog Bakery was the closest I found and they made dog biscuits; gourmet dog biscuits, but not beer or any fermented adult beverages.

About The Logo

I designed the original logo from pictures of my dogs (the original three) that I enlarged in a photo editor, printed and traced with a Sharpie on vellum.  After making these "line drawings" and adding embellishments to make them stand on their own, I scanned the tracings with a flatbed scanner back into the photo editing software and moved them around as objects until it looked right to me.  I got the idea for the oval from the international logos you see on peoples cars and didn't add that until later.  I gave Tasha's image some grey shading and that was it.  The original logo was born.  I picked a standard font for my labels and started making labels for my homebrew.  I get as many compliments on the names and labels as I have for the actual contents of the bottle.

So, the new logo is now on all the pages and I know it is going to generate some questions.  I have this guilt complex that I created a brewery with 3 dogs on the logo and now I have 4 dogs.  We got our 4th dog in 2003, 2 years into the 3 Dog Brewery's existence.  The new logo will have all four dogs on it, but it will still be called “The 3 Dog Brewery”.  Confusing?  So was the Three Musketeers for me.  Of course I now know that one of them was not a Musketeer, but there were four of them, right?  I can’t say one of my dogs is not, well, a dog but you get the idea.  So, you cold say that we are the 3 Dog Brewery and we have a "spare" dog.  Just like keeping a spare hydrometer around, right?  No, probably not.  I'm still working on a good story for this problem. 

About Me

So, my friends have told me that when I decide to do something, even if I have no idea how to do it, I will find a way to learn it.  I am very much a "Do It Yourselfer" and have a hard time paying someone else to do work I should be able to do.  There are several examples, but I’ll spare you.  Have you seen the Library page on this site?  I enjoy doing research and will read anything I can find if it’s a topic I’m interested in; but I digress.  I claimed the domain names 3dogbrewery.com and 3dogbrew.com and threw up some parking page to hold the space and give me some time to build a web page or two.

I started buying brewing equipment and moved to all grain brewing my second year of brewing.  I have a dedicated “beer fridge” that is a converted chest freezer, a grain mill which I have all the parts to motorize, 5 soda kegs and two CO2 tanks.  After 7 years of brewing, I still love it.  The creativity of designing a beer mixed with the analytical science of brewing is the same reason I love software development.  Did I mention that I make beer?

About The Dogs

With the exception of Cleo, all of our dogs are from rescue shelters.  Cleo was purchased as a puppy at a pet store in Humble, TX by my wife when she was supposed to be buying crickets for the lizard.  We've had her since 1998.  The lady at the pet store told us she was a Chihuahua.  As you can see from her photo, she's no Chihuahua.  Maybe Rat Terrier, Mini-pin, or some combination of the three (hey, she might be part Chihuahua).  Cleo almost got called “Cricket”, which would have fit her personality.  Cleo has two major issues:  She barks at anything and growls and snaps if cornered.  Discipline is a challenge.  The other issue is, she has a sensitive stomach.  This dog barfs for no apparent reason at any given time.  Not much we can do about that. 

We acquired Tootsie next.  Tootsie was found chasing cars in a trailer park.  A lady my wife worked with brought her to the office and my wife brought her home.  She had been living on the street for a few months by the look of her and needed some "maintenance".  For the first year we had her, we couldn't get her to walk on the grass, she had never seen it before and didn't know what to make of it.  Tootsie was named after the famous chocolaty candy, the Tootsie Roll.  Tootsie is solely responsible for her and Cleo being allowed to sleep in the bed.  Before Tootsie, Cleo had her own bed and that's where she slept.  Tootsie loves to hunt.  Bugs, frogs, birds, squirrels, you name it.  She has caught birds out of mid air which is pretty impressive, given her short little legs.  She also has sinus allergies, which is apparently common in Dachshunds, so she gets prednisone 2 or 3 times a week.

Tasha came next.  We got Tasha a few months after we put Brutus down.  Brutus was my wife's dog and we had him flown out to Texas after my wife's mom had heart surgery and couldn't keep after him.  Brutus was a German Sheppard, Doberman, Pit Bull mix and he was just as nasty as that sounds; all fur and teeth.  Of course he was sweet once you got to know him, but you didn't want to mess with him.  So, with a big empty spot in my wife's heart after 14 years of having Brutus around, we went looking at the rescues for a dog.  We met Tasha (her name was Sasha, but we didn't like that much) at the vet of the lady who had to give her up.  I guess this was her daughter's dog and she was going away to college or boot camp or something.  Anyway, Tasha was an immediate hit with the other two and these 3 dogs were the inspiration for the 3 Dog Brewery.

We found Joe Boxer at the Lone Star Boxer Rescue and after auditions with several other Boxers, Tasha adopted him.  Tasha having a problem with a male dog was the last thing we expected, but she went after several of them.  Dogs we liked, she fought.  Joe Boxer's name at the shelter was Pilgrim, but that just didn't fit him.  He was found near the border of Louisiana near I10 just after Katrina hit and was heart worm positive.  We got him treated and keep up on is heart worm medication.  My wife and her friend Helen came up with the name Joe Boxer, we just call him Joe-Joe.  He has been a great dog, great with our little daughter and good with the other dogs.  He even puts up with Cleo, which amazes me considering what he could do to her if he wanted to.  I don't know why he puts up with her, but I guess I'm glad he does.  Now if I could just get him off my side of the bed...

The Dogs

Cleo

Tootsie

 
Tasha

Joe-Joe