Chaotic. Frantic. Nerve-racking. Local brewer Brendan Gough compared his mindset while opening his first bar, Liquid Gravity in San Luis Obispo, during 2020 to “jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.”
His experience opening the brewery’s new sister location in Old Town Orcutt, however, couldn’t have been more different, Gough said.
“In six weeks, we turned that building [in SLO] and got it open. This one was sort of a year in the making,” said Gough, who opened the brewery’s Orcutt taproom with his wife in May. “Once it was go time for this one, it didn’t have the same—pardon the pun here—the same gravity to it. It felt like life or death when we were opening the brewery [in SLO].”
Gough said it felt especially risky the first time around because he had just left a position at another brewery and had never opened a bar of his own.
Opening the Orcutt taproom seemed like a breeze in comparison.
“We’ve worked hard to establish the brand, people like the beer, and we’ve got a few awards and accolades under our belt,” he explained.
SLO is Gough’s hometown and where he still lives, which helped seal his decision to open his first brewery there when the right space opened up, just a five-minute drive from his home. As an Allan Hancock College alumnus, he has nostalgia for the Santa Maria Valley and was excited when some property owners in Orcutt contacted him with a unique opportunity.
“We were actually approached by the people who own Patricio’s Pizza to see if we wanted to go into that space,” said Gough, who transformed an adjoining dining room at the popular pizzeria into the new Liquid Gravity taproom. “This was being used essentially as a banquet room for Patricio’s.”
Since the space is fairly small, Gough said he and his wife completed the necessary renovations themselves without hiring a contractor. Over the course of about a year, they’d set aside free time after a full day of working in SLO “or even sometimes late at night just to squeeze a couple hours in” at the Orcutt taproom while it was in development.
Gough said that a rumor mill seemed to emerge once passersby noticed something new was happening next door to Patricio’s.
“We had people walking by pretty regularly when we were building it, when we were inside working, and I’d see cars slow down to check it out,” Gough said. “There were a lot of things that kind of contributed to it taking a little longer than we had hoped, but we got such an amazing response when we finally opened. It felt like it was all worth it.”
During the taproom’s weeklong soft opening in May, Gough wanted to take things slow without publicizing anything before holding a formal grand opening soon after.
“I was very careful not to announce that, because when you announce a soft opening, then it becomes a grand opening,” Gough said with a laugh.
With Patricio’s Pizza right next door, Gough said he doesn’t feel the need to start offering food at the taproom—with locally produced ales, stouts, sours, IPAs, and double IPAs among its drink selections.
“I have friends who have opened breweries that have food components, and that’s just not what I do. I’m a brewer, I’m not a restaurateur,” said Gough, who described the new taproom’s relationship with Patricio’s Pizza as symbiotic.
“We get the benefit of having people stay longer and get an extra pint or two if they know that food is a really easy option,” the brewer said. “And they [Patricio’s] certainly get spillover business.”
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood could use some fizzy lifting drinks. Send bubbles and an astronaut helmet to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 8-18, 2023.
