I met Christian Layke in April 2016, when he was still the head brewer at the Rockville, Maryland location of Gordon Biersch. Like many others I had spoken to before, and since, he wanted to open his own brewery. But, he wasn't a homebrewer with romantic ideas of going pro with a 5 barrel system and a shoestring budget. He had many years of education and experience in brewing (in addition to being a homebrewer) and had grandiose ideas of opening a full production brewery with a world-class taproom and launching immediately into distribution. I was skeptical...at first. I quickly came to realize that Christian had already developed a clear vision of what he wanted to build and had concrete plans to get there.
Fast forward to March 2020. Christian and his business partner, Brett Robison, just celebrated the first anniversary of opening Silver Branch Brewing Company in Silver Spring, Maryland. I sat down with them recently to reflect on the legal lessons they had learned in the three years leading up to their opening.
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