Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Peterson.
Matt, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
We are just regular guys that have a huge passion for brewing and creating. My partner, Nick Sorenson, and I started brewing out of necessity, at around age 19. We figured “hey, we can’t legally buy beer, and it’s kind of a pain to go about getting it, but we CAN legally buy all the stuff to MAKE beer.” We made some pretty poor stuff at first, but we fell in love with the artistry and the craft of brewing. The Saturday tours at Saint Arnold became our weekly ritual, and planted the seed in our brains that if someone worked hard enough, they could make a life from brewing. As we went off in pursuit of our own careers, we continued to stay in touch through our brewing endeavors. Nick went out to the west coast, and consequently spent a lot of time visiting breweries and drinking on that side of the country. When I would go out to visit, we would spend the majority of our time visiting breweries, drinking, and brewing beer. We decided about 9 years ago to pursue making beer as a career. We knew at the time that we would have to bootstrap a brewery, and would never have the cash to hire others to help us along. We were going to have to do everything ourselves if we wanted to be able to make it work. We spent years learning to brew, learning to scale up, learning the equipment and controls, working on our palates and trying to understand the industry better. Our name, Sigma, comes from the Greek letter. It means “the sum of” in math and science, and we felt that it pretty perfectly applied to our business. We do everything ourselves, and this brewery is quite literally the sum of us and the work we’ve put into it. We managed to open our doors on September 30th, 2016, 3 years after having written a business plan, and about 8 years after having decided that this was a path we wanted to go down. We’re now focused on bringing quality, small batch beer to the East End and Houston, and are excited to continue to grow as brewers and a brewery.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Definitely not smooth, by any means. Our biggest hurdle has been the financial one, so I guess that doesn’t really make us unique. All small business needs capital, and we’re definitely not the exception to that. For us, it was learn to brew, manage a cellar and package beer, learn to run a company and manage the books, and maintain all of the equipment – or not do anything at all. We knew we’d never have the money to be able to hire professional help to get off the ground, so we spent a long time training and learning and examining all of the ways in which we weren’t adequate. After a while it becomes kind of a downer focusing on all the ways you don’t measure up. Without that, though, I don’t think we’d ever have been able to actually get a brewery open. It forced us to close those gaps and get better, or face the fact that we’d failed on making our dream a reality.
Sigma Brewing Company – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Our company name says exactly what we’re about. Sigma means a summation, and this company is a summation of us. Everything we do, we do in-house and it is done by the ownership of the brewery. All of our branding and concept art is done in house, as is our recipe design, equipment maintenance and upgrades, and new construction. The owners are the head brewers. We’re proud that we can make the great tasting beer that we do and know that it’s genuine and 100% us. We know that’s not sustainable in the long run, but it’s important to us to be connected to this brewery in every aspect. As we grow, we’ll have to continue to find like-minded folks to help us, and we’re really excited to move in that direction.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Opening our doors and seeing folks we’ve never even met before enjoy the beer we created. It almost didn’t feel real.
Contact Info:
- Address: 3118 Harrisburg Blvd
Unit 108
Houston, TX 77003 - Website: www.sigmabrewingcompany.com
- Phone: 3463523190
- Email: info@sigmabrewingcompany.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/sigmabrewing
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/SigmaBeer
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/sigmabrewingco
- Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/sigma-brewing-company-houston-2
Image Credit:
Drew Buerhaus
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