Better on Draft | Craft Beer Podcast · Better On Draft Podcast

Better on Draft 379 | Broken Clock Brewing Cooperative

·1 hr 6 min·4 clips

Broken Clock directs profits into My Very Own Bed, Habitat for Humanity, and Mississippi River restoration.

1. Better on Draft episode 379 focuses on Broken Clock Brewing Co-op in Northeast Minneapolis. 2. Jeremy joins as the co-op’s operator, and Wendy and Rob steer the conversation around beer, ownership, and taproom culture. 3. The episode asks what changes when a brewery is built as a cooperative instead of a traditional business. 4. Jeremy says Broken Clock opened its doors in 2017 after fundraising started in 2015. 5. He explains that Broken Clock is a 308A cooperative with 1,880 members who are equal owners. 6. A single membership costs $200 for a lifetime share, and members can either vote on the board or only use the weekly beer benefit. 7. Jeremy says about 25% of members are active, while about 5% are extremely active in feedback and governance. 8. He describes brewer memberships as a way to involve homebrewers directly in the brewery’s process. 9. Those brewer members pay $350 individually or $500 as a household and can join quarterly brewer-member beers. 10. The brewery also lets brewer members buy grain through group orders at cost. 11. Jeremy says the brewery uses blind voting to choose some homebrew-inspired recipes for scale-up. 12. He traces the co-op idea to frustration with corporate work, where employees had little voice in decisions. 13. He says the first idea was a co-op, and the brewery came second. 14. Jeremy recalls meeting the future first head brewer at a happy hour after deciding they needed one. 15. He says Broken Clock now gives the brewer a lot of autonomy while still keeping styles broad enough for members. 16. The taproom menu includes items like Hold the Beans, a 3% ESB, Pocket Watch Pecan brown ale, slushies, and THC seltzer. 17. The tone stays conversational and practical, with Wendy and Rob asking detailed follow-ups about membership, taproom design, and beer lineup choices. 18. Jeremy answers at length and often circles back to community participation, brewery operations, and the reasons behind each program. 19. People interested in co-op ownership, homebrewing, and neighborhood breweries would likely enjoy this. 20. People looking for a tightly edited beer review or short-form trivia would probably skip it.

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