Chasing the Rabbit: Bobby Thomas of Red Hare Brewing

The head brewer talks background, beers and bunnies.

- Chris Guest

WHAT LED YOU TO BECOME A CRAFT BREWER?

In short, I like to drink craft beer. I was selling plumbing supplies with Roger Davis (now my business partner) before the Great Recession. At some point, we both decided that we were pretty good at drinking beer, and sales were slowing on the job, so we decided to give making our own beer a try. It seemed better than making sales calls at the time since everyone was just so damned depressed about the economy. We started brewing beer in Roger’s basement while making some sales calls at the same time. Of course we drank a good bit while doing so – trying as many different beers as we could. Time went on and we got better and better at brewing and drinking beer. All the while, the economy kept going down the shitter (literally for those of us in the plumbing business), and we finally decided to seriously look at starting a brewery. We put together a plan, presented it to friends and family while letting them sample our product and we were off. Well, not really. It took a good bit longer to beg, borrow and steal (just kidding) the rest of the money we thought we needed to actually start a brewery. We had no idea how much it was really going to take in the end, but we kept pushing forward. Roger and I headed to San Francisco for the CBC and I ended up going out to UC Davis for the Intensive Brewing Science course. Before we knew it, we had a building, equipment and a lot more debt. We’ve been brewing ever since and haven’t looked back.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE RED HARE BEER?

My favorite beer of ours changes over the seasons. I’m really digging our SPF 50/50 right now with the hot weather. They just go down so easy, especially by the pool. I love all of our seasonals but usually fall back to our year-round Cotton Tail Pale Ale followed by a Gangway IPA, then back to a Cotton Tail.