BREWING
Hops and Dreams Veteran beer duo forges ahead with Simple Machine Brewing By Brandie Bosworth
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n 2017, Matt Wright and Marshall Norris met while working at Helton Brewing Company. Both had the same hopes—to be more involved in the beer industry. The pair along with a silent, third partner, dug up Norris’ old business plan and left their day jobs to found Simple Machine Brewing Company. Wright moved to Arizona from Washington, D.C., with the hopes of shifting away from his corporate sales gig. Norris, an Arizona native, started as a home brewer in college before volunteering at a Tucson brewery to learn more about the process. “It took us from December of 2014 to January of 2019 to actually sign a lease on a build-
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ing,” Norris says. The business held a soft opening the week of Thanksgiving in 2019, which Norris says went off without a hitch and without drunk and disorderlies. “It was kind of cool just to get our feet under
us and make sure the draft lines were working,” he says. The brewery started by selling only local, guest beer on all 14 of its handles. By its January 2020 grand opening, it was procuring its own flavors on its handles and the sales
