A new brewery is preparing for liftoff in Philadelphia.
Space Cadet Brewing Co., a small-batch operation promising “to push craft beer into tomorrow,” will make its debut this fall. The brand is the science project of Richie Tevlin, the former head brewer for Victory and Philadelphia brewing companies. Tevlin plans to release each new brew as a single batch of 80 cases, meaning each beer will be available only once before disappearing into the atmosphere.
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“I’m promising to everyone that these beers aren’t coming back,” Tevlin said. “I want people to treat the cans as almost like a collectible … This is almost like a Pokemon card or a baseball card where you can hold onto it and it has value.”
The beers will be available in Philadelphia and its suburbs the first week of October, though they won’t be in a taproom. Space Cadet Brewing Co. will begin business as a contract brewery, hopping between established production sites while it searches for a permanent home. Tevlin said he pursued this model to enter the market and “get my brand out there” while avoiding high overhead costs and an unsustainable loan.
“In this day and age, building out and opening a production brewery costs, if you’re gonna do it the correct way with large enough tanks to make money and a good operation where you can distribute, it costs about $2 million,” he said. “I don’t have $2 million. I’ve been brewing beers since I got out of college and it’s not the highest-paying job. It just doesn’t make sense, especially in this economy, to be borrowing money like that.”
Tevlin said the goal of opening a new brewery with the goal of it becoming a large, regional brewery is less realistic than it was 10-15 years ago. Now, he said, successful new breweries are taking a more localized approach, modeling themselves after wineries or restaurants.
“And it’s really kind of neighborhood-based, where you’re creating your specific niche of, this is my brand,” Tevlin said. “And then you’re getting the people that are around your neighborhood or your city or whatever it is to fall in love with it.”
Workhorse Brewing Co. in King of Prussia will be one of Tevlin’s first brewing partners, and he has a distributor lined up. Penn Beer will distribute the beers in Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, Berks, Lehigh and Northampton counties. They also will be available at a public launch party at the Boozy Mutt in Fairmount on Friday, Nov. 1.
The first beer on the launchpad is Splashtronaut, a 5.5% ABV pale ale. Its cans will be adorned with illustrations of the brand’s mascot, the Space Cadet, a clumsy astronaut searching planets for the perfect pint. (Expect to see him on all of the brewery’s cans, illustrated in unusual scenes by comic book artist Matt Gaudio.) Like all of the brewery’s offerings, the beer will be available in 16-ounce cans and kegs.
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