Goldwater Brewing Co

Where It All Began – The starting point of Goldwater Brewing Co. actually dates back a few decades ago. Growing up with an avid home brewing dad, Chad & Dillon McClelland had brewing in their blood at an early age. Although at the time it seemed that they were just grinding grain, adding green flower things to boiling beer soup, while making the garage smell good, over the years and into their 20’s it turned into a full-blown passion. Both Chad and Dillon grew to love the process of making something from nothing with patience and the guidance of their father, Greg McClelland, while enjoying the final golden product of their labor.

Fast forward to having brewed many batches of craft ales and lagers with dad, mostly good ones and some bad ones, with both frustrations and increased knowledge about brewing beer, they all grew up. Chad and Dillon graduated from college and started their adult lives. Dillon received a B.A. degree in Graphic Design and landed a job as the Design Director for a leading hospitality company. From there, he started his own independent branding agency where he furthered his skills by designing high quality logos, educating his clients on the importance of a quality brand, and building high-end brand identity systems for them. Chad earned a B.A. in Sociology, traveled the world, worked for a few high-end restaurants and became an assistant brewer at a Tempe based brewery. Jimmy Disken, who has been apart of the family for over 10 years lead and managed restaurants for a popular Arizona based multi-location restaurant company for many years making him the missing piece needed to get their future Tap Rooms and distribution off the ground.

This story really gets rolling as soon as Chad returned back from his global travels. While away, he found that he spent a majority of his time traveling to check out craft beer bars and breweries around Europe, Southeast Asia, and New Zealand also known as “boutique beer” bars. He finally realized that what he had been doing all along in the garage was what he wanted to do for his career. One of the first things Chad said at his welcome home party made the family all pretty stoked… “I want to be in the craft beer business”. From that point forward, they all got behind it with their similar interests for the craft beer industry.

In 2014, they got to work to open the brewery. Plotting out the business plan, finding a location, coming up with names, designing the brand, test brewing and sampling commercial recipes – it all seemed to just fall right in place. Through trial and error, overcoming setbacks, construction and permit processing, Goldwater Brewing Co. was born. The Brewery and Tap Room opened on May 1st, 2015. With all four family members turned partners, all sharing the same vision for Goldwater Brewing Co., they quickly realized how well they were aligned to make a craft brewery business a success.

Today, they operate a Brewery that pumps out kegs for their two Tap Rooms, 100+ bars & restaurants while producing up some pretty cool can releases at both locations… The story continues!