Short Circuit Stout, Wheatstone Bridge, and Ampere Amber are three of the craft beers on tap at a micro-brewery owned by threemaybe you guessed who already?--electrical engineers.

St. Paul, MNIt was during one of many Happy Hours involving beer that electrical engineers Jake Johnson, Jeff Moriarty, and George Kellerman decided to take the plunge and start their own open source craft brewery in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The electrical-engineering themed brewery's robot logo and wall mural (shown here) were created by artist Ben Courneya.

That was back in 2010, but their interest in craft beers had been brewing ever since earning BSEEs from the University of Minnesota in 2006. Moriarty and Johnson started home brewing the summer after graduation, using extract kits on the kitchen stove. I also took my first trip to England, Scotland, and Ireland at that time and was able to experience all their delicious beers, said Moriarty. I just really liked all the flavors of craft beer.

Once the idea of starting a brewery had moved past the dreaming-about-it-stage, Moriarty and Johnson scaled that home brew operation to a 1/2bbl (15.5 gallons or 1 keg) pilot nano brewery, complete with all the equipment of a larger, commercial brewery.

The micro brewery offers tours of the brew process (complete with all the technical details an engineer could ever want), along with beer tastings in its taproom.

The teams engineering skills proved instrumental in getting the business off the ground, with a minimum of burps in the process. "A significant aspect of engineering is learning how to think and analyze data, which was a huge help to us in launching the business, especially as brewing is very numbers-intensive, said Moriarty.

Engineering also teaches you how to accomplish tasks with a risk-based approach as well as completing tasks and trials in discrete, small iterations as well as using process control., he added. Both are vital when it comes to designing and consistently producing a beer.

The biggest challenge for the team was raising the necessary capital for their startup. Breweries are very capital-intensive businesses, and Moriarty said that being a young team meant it took a lot of time to convince people to invest money in the startup.

Describing the fund-raising as an unpleasant and difficult period, Moriarty said that he and is co-founders made wise use of the time refining their plans and working on the beers. When you are so passionate about something and know it can be a success, it becomes an emotional roller coaster trying to raise the money you need, he said.

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