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The campaign launched on March 10 and hit 50 percent of its goal by early morning on March 13. The company has until April 9 to meet its target. On March 11, Kickstarter’s staff named Fairfield Craft Ales’s campaign a “Project We Love.”
For its campaign, the brewery posted a music video featuring owners Mike Borruso and Joe Bow dressed as blues musicians singing an original song about their project. Parts were shot at the brewery’s Honeyspot Road location, so viewers can see how the space is coming along.
Borruso and Bow are avid, award-winning home brewers who met when Bow was coaching both their sons in youth baseball. Last fall, everything came together and they signed a lease for 724 Honeyspot Road in Stratford.
Since signing the lease, Borruso and Bow have invested more than $100,000 of their own money into the project and are hard at work acquiring equipment and building the brewery and a tap room where up to eight different varieties of beer will be available in pints for onsite consumption and in growlers to take home. Borruso and Bow plan to get their equipment hooked up and the space painted by the end of March. But even assuming all that gets done on time, they can't start brewing without government approval.
Borruso, who notes that they filed for their federal brewer's permit in October, said, "We're hoping to get our approval by the end of March, start brewing in April, and open in May. Then we can start serving our beer, which is the whole point."
In the meantime, they're paying rent and utilities, and continue to incur startup expenses.
"This Kickstarter campaign is all about getting us through this initial startup period so we can deliver the amount of beer and brewery experience that our customers deserve," said Bow. "The best part of this whole thing will be seeing people enjoying our products."
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