Local home brewers turn home brewing hobby into business

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Have you ever thought of turning your hobby into a business? What if that hobby was brewing beer? That's what some local home brewers did, and now they're pouring pints for all of Houston to enjoy.

From serving friends, to serving patrons, brew master, Josh Anderson is doing what he loves.

"I just wanted to do the beer part, and they let me do that" Anderson said.

Anderson was an engineer with Lyondell for 13 years. But after his wife bought him his first home brewing kit, a new passion was found.

Anderson said "the 1st batch, when I tried it I was like oh this is it. I want to do this now for the rest of my life."

From there, you could say Anderson's hobby fermented.

"I just had fun sharing it with people" Anderson said. "And when I bring it to people I respected and home brewing clubs and stuff and they told me I was doing a great job, it was really all I needed."

So Anderson along with his partners found a location, bought the equipment and went for it.

"That happened really fast. And I had several partners that were all working on different pieces of it which made it very doable" Anderson said.

They opened Saloon Door Brewing last year in Webster, bringing many years of recipes from home.

"I just started brewing everything that I had every brewed that I really liked, and we just tried it" Anderson said.

About 10 miles from Saloon Dooris Bakfishin Pearland.

They're about to celebrate their 1-year anniversary in March, with 5 core beers on tap. Kris Szecsy is the brew master.

A background in marine biology, along with his home brewing hobby helped paved the path.

"I think that's a conversation every home brewer has. You get together with your buddy, yeah we should do this. You have a few drinks and it gets more and more serious" Szecsy said.

From there, Szecsy and his business partner Brian poured out a business plan to move forward.

Szecsy said one of the hardest things was to finally quit his day job.

"Yeah, that was definitely one of the scariest days. Walking into a secure job that pays good money and you're like you know what, I gotta go follow this."

For anyone thinking of starting their own brewery, Szecsy said to be prepared to put in a lot of blood, sweat and hops.

"Way more work than what was expected" Szecsy said. "You think it's going to be 60 hours a week. No that's on a light week. It's 7 days a week, 12 hours a day is not uncommon right now. If you're thinking about it, be ready for a lot of work.

But at the end of the day, he said it's worth it.