Darren Schleth

When my brother Olin and I started this business in 1995, we were just following our growing passion for brewing beer – it was that simple. Looking back, it was a very exciting time as we learned all we could about the craft of home brewing and began to connect with more and more fellow enthusiasts.

When you serve like-minded people like we do, it’s only natural that you provide a more personal type of customer service. We want our customers to succeed in creating whatever types of beer they envision (and now that includes wine and coffee as well). That’s why we’ll do everything we can to help you achieve your goals, mainly through education and lots of expert advice.

For me, it all started with fixing toasters as a kid. Now I’m building BrewSculptures™.

I was one of those kids who was instantly drawn to anything mechanical, being fascinated by learning how things work and figuring out how to fix them when they don’t work. This great love for mechanics has stayed with me ever since, and it showed up almost right away when we started the company.

I knew we needed to equip our customers with the real deal – a professional brewery on a personal scale – so I helped create what we call BrewSculptures™, which was among the world’s first commercially available, all-grain home-brewing systems. I’m proud that these were used by Sierra Nevada and Rogue to develop recipes, while breweries like Mike Hess and Lawson’s Finest Liquids used these systems to launch their now huge breweries. Our newest version reflects the many improvements we’ve made, based on 20 years’ worth of R&D plus plenty of customer feedback.

Right now I am working on rebuilding the original shed where we started into the ultimate home brewery. Stay tuned for more.

The enjoyment I get working with my hands also extends to gardening, which I’ve done as a hobby for over 20 years. It’s a different kind of satisfaction, to add natural beauty to your surroundings. In my case, the garden covers an entire acre.