Our story begins like so many others, in a Target store during Christmas.
Alan, in search of the perfect gift for Derek, stumbled upon a Mr Beer Kit. Two months later, Derek's 2nd batch of beer was ready. They cracked open a bottle, took a sip and promptly poured it down the drain. With no beer in the house, Derek and Alan decided to check out this new brewery they had heard about that opened in Kennesaw, Burnt Hickory Brewery(BHB). After 1 or 2 beers (haha, who are they kidding?) and an hour or 3 of talking to Scott Hedeen, the owner and brewmaster, they decided to up their homebrew game.
The very next day they signed up for a homebrew class at Hop City. Watching the teacher boil water for an hour, adding assorted ingredients; hops, syrup(malt extract), while they got to drink beer, they thought to themselves "wow, this is easy". So they bought everything they needed to start brewing their very own, amazing beer(a big stainles steel pot, a plastic bucket, a beer kit and a few six packs of beer to drink while they brewed). The next weekend they got together with Ron and Cody and proceeded to brew their first batch of homebrew (Mr Beer just does not count), a Chocolate Milk Stout.
Following their 3rd extract brew, like most men with a new hobby, they figured it was time to spend more money. So they purchased what was needed to start all-grain brewing.
They soon realized a name was needed for their brewery, they didn't want to serve their beer and say "This is Cody, Alan, Ron and Derek's homebrew". They tossed around a few names, some definitely not worth repeating, then came up with the idea of incorporating their initials into the name of the brewery. High Card(Cody, Alan, Ron, Derek) Brewing was born.
Their first big beer endeavor consisted of brewing all the beer for Alan's daughter's wedding. They brewed a Raspberry Wheat, a Lemon Vanilla Wheat, a Pale Ale and a Brown Ale. After getting a lot of positive feedback on those beers, they brewed the Raspberry Wheat again and entered it in a local homebrew competition, winning their first medal, a gold.
They continued hanging out at BHB and got to be good friends with Scott. After tasting some of their beers, Scott offered to let them brew on the BHB pilot system and serve it at the BHB 3rd Anniversary. BHB is known for making beers you can't get at other breweries, so they wanted to brew something that went along with that spirit. They came up with White Queen, A Russian Enlightened Stout© with cocoa nibs, vanilla beans, coffee, habaneros, and lactose. This quickly became their most popular beer. They were able to brew it at BHB for their 5th Anniversary and at Red Brick for The Great Southern Beer Competition where it took first place.
Recently they brewed a collaboration beer with Schoolhouse Brewing in Marietta. It was a new version of their multiple award winning PBJ Sandwich Beer. And now they are on the verge of opening their own brewery in Downtown Tucker. It will be a joint venture with BlueTarp Brewing. We thank each and every one of you for supporting us on this journey and we're looking forward to all of you helping us expand this story.