Local Family Brewing Up Business

They filled 150 barrels over the first few months. Last year they put up 2,900 barrels, and this year the goal is 5,000 barrels or more.  Here's a great article from the Wall Street Journal that explores this industry,  You may find out that you'd like to follow the Miller's lead and start your own business.

If that's the case, you may be interested to learn that Chef Richard Lambert is teaching students at Florida State College at Jacksonville's School of Culinary Arts and Hospitality how to brew beer. I asked him why:

"First of all, when we are talking about food…anything we put into our mouth is considered food, whether its water, whether its Coca-Cola, whether its quinoa, it’s all food. Our students will go out into the industry, and they will not know the difference between a lager and ale. Which there is a big difference between them.... It’s all part of training their palette…to taste. I think it’s really important," said Lambert.

Lambert also recognizes the entrepreneurial potential.

"We have the Norton’s who opened up Ragtime and they started with a one-room restaurant, and they were serving nothing but fish and chicken. No beef. And they decided to put a brewery in, first brewery in Jacksonville, and they sold off probably ten years ago…and they are retired right now. I would think that they were entrepreneurs. And you see what has happened in at least the last year…as far as micro, macro pubs and micro pubs and people serving craft beer in their establishments," said Lambert.