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Photo courtesy of RaR Brewing Company
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THE ART OF REVIVAL continued from previous page
PIZZA M NTH Some of RaR Brewing's artwork, displayed in the new brewpub, still under construction next door to the current taproom.
O&A: You were doing the graphic design? All of this stuff [pointing to the wall of large beer-label icons]? Brohawn: Yeah, so those are all his illustrations. He’d hand me the piece of paper he drew it on, and I’d take it from there. O&A: So you have to wear a lot of different hats? You’re the owner, you’re the electrician, you’re the contractor, you’re the bartender . . . Brohawn: Yeah, I came in today and was working on the canning line because we had some issues. I ran that for the first year-anda-half after we installed it. Then came back over here [to the pub area] and was building furniture. I don’t think I took a vacation until two years ago. O&A: You said you got the branding right from the beginning. Do you think the logo played a part in that? Brohawn: Yeah, it got people talking. It still does. O&A: Because there’s a little bit of a mystery behind it. Brohawn: It’s that, but with all our marketing we just tease and hint. We never just throw out info unless we’re coming right up to a surprise or a release. With the logo, I wanted something that could just be a single color and be noticeable and stand out. I actually worked on another logo for four weeks straight and I hated it. Then I got shit-faced drunk one night, deleted it, and did that one in about 15 minutes. [He proudly points to the large RaR logo on the wall behind the bar]. Look how it pops! O&A: You said you were an electrician. Had you taken any design classes? Brohawn: I went to college for graphic design. I never finished; I dropped out. But I went for two years at Salisbury. I dropped out and sold mortgages for a while. Then started doing electrical work. A local business—residential, commercial, a little bit of agriculture. But all those things played such a massive role for me. The graphic design. The trades. The electric and plumbing. I still use it every day here. I didn’t realize it, but I basically groomed myself for this position. O&A: Elaborate on that. Brohawn: It’s everything a brewer needs to know. You got to be handy. You’ve got to be able to focus and fix problems quickly. But even further, no brewers know electric work. That’s the one trade where everyone’s like, “F_ _ _ it. Call somebody.” Anything that goes wrong in this brewery at any time, I know how to fix. Where we are right now, we can’t produce enough [to keep up with demand]. We’ve never been able to. But we cannot lose a day. Ever. So to be able to get stuff back up and running is priceless. 54 OCTOBER 2019 | OUTANDABOUTNOW.COM