Couple Tastes Success With New Trend in Microbreweries

The owners of the Shields Brewing Co. microbrewery and restaurant in Ventura are looking for an investor to take over the restaurant portion of their business. The move would allow the husband-and-wife entrepreneurs to concentrate more on brewing, packaging, and selling their beers and ales.

Bob and Trudy Shields have operated the Shields Brewing Co. for five years, with beer production now up to about 400 barrels annually. Located a block off Main Street in western Ventura, the business does well with tourists on weekends, said Trudy Shields, but during the week, it is fairly quiet.

“This was never a good location,” because there is little foot traffic, she said. “We want to focus now on our beer sales. Bottled beer and kegs have more potential to be profitable than our 68-seat restaurant.”

Shields Brewing supplies beer to local eating establishments such as the Chart House, Red Lobster and the Derby Club restaurant at the Ventura County Fairgrounds off-track betting facility, and to liquor stores and supermarkets.

Last year, the couple sold the rights to their Gold Coast Beer label to a beer manufacturer in China. Like European beers, microbrewed beers are made from specialty grains. They are praised by their fans for possessing more flavor, aroma and color than American beers produced by larger brewing companies.

In Washington, Oregon and western Canada, specialty beers dominate the market, said Bob Shields. “Nationally,” he said, “the industry is catching on like gangbusters.”

According to the Denver-based Institute for Brewing Studies, production of microbrewed beers increased 50% from 1993 to 1994, to 2.5 million barrels or about 77 million gallons annually. Sales of microbrewed beers totaled $1.3 billion in 1994, according to institute figures.

Microbrewed beers have been relatively slow to catch on in Southern California, though. Scott Ungermann, a graduate student in the food and science department at UC Davis, said about 100 of the nation’s 500-plus microbreweries are in California, but most of them are located from San Francisco northward. The nation’s first microbrewery opened in Sonoma County in 1977.

But Ungerman said microbreweries have begun to pop up with more frequency in Southern California. “From San Diego to Orange County, they are becoming popular,” Bob Shields said. “I think this is the time to get firmly entrenched in the business. Restaurants, liquor stores and retail outlets are all paying attention to the market and are making the change to microbrewed beers.”

Shields began studying the process of brewing about 10 years ago, attending seminars, visiting breweries and enrolling in a brewing course at UC Davis. He was soon making his own beer at home.