Lessons Learned

After a few years in business and even more as homebrewers, Hudson Valley Brewery’s Mike Renganeschi and Jason Synan share their thoughts on what they wish they knew when they started that they know now.

“I wish I knew that you could hire brewers to be under you to clean stuff,” says Renganeschi with a laugh. Synan immediately agrees. “The way our company has grown, we’ve each had a hand in it the whole time, and what I’ve been reflecting on lately is how it’s grown. I like how our careers have gone, but maybe going back, it’d be good to correct it a little bit.”

He says the most fun he has a brewer and in his job these days, aside from actually making beer, is seeing the people who work at the brewery doing a job and executing on an idea that the duo had years ago but never had the time to tackle.

“Now we’re growing a company around it, and we have people who work with us, and fans and all this stuff that came out of weird ideas that we had on our front porch,” says Renganeschi. “Had I known all this was going to happen 5 years ago, I’d have been a little more confident but still followed the same course.”

It comes down to having the right people in the right places, says Synan, “having a team that you can trust and people who are passionate. We should have hired more people earlier on, and we would have gotten to where we are faster … and had to clean fewer fermentors.”