35 years now.
I was very lucky to start my business near the beginning of the explosive growth of small breweries, wineries and distilleries. I made a sudden pivot out of homebrewing when I was the largest supplier in 1993, in order to focus on commercial winery equipment. I made a pivot away from harvest equipment in 2016 in order to focus on the explosive growth in distilling, and to prepare for the inevitable decline in beer, wine and spirits that we see today.
Here are some details from each of these periods.
The Homebrew years, 1991-2003
1987. I came across a book on making beer while hanging out at the Riverside Public Library. The original Homebrewery shop was nearby and I started to make beer in my studio aparment. I joined their homebrew club. When I walked into my first homebrew club meeting, someone yelled out "Hey, there's a chick in here!". I sat next to a guy who had B-E-E-R tattooed across the 3rd joint of his fingers. My son Bernie attended his first homebrew club meeting when he was 3 days old in 1988.
1991. I started St. Pats in a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 sons on a $517 tax return check in March. My youngest son, Patrick, was born in late 1990 and the cost of daycare was more than I could make working. So I began teaching homebrewing classes at 6 different university and college extension programs in the Santa Cruz/San Jose area. I sold supplies to my students, formed a homebrew club, and sold supplies to members of the club. I also taught beer appreication classes. [Syllabus: Give me money. I buy beer. You get to taste some. I drink the rest.]. I would put a sign on my door "At the playground" so I wouldn't miss a customer.
Sold $22K of supplies in 1991. Sold that business for $2500 and moved to Austin. Received my first Austin mail order on New Years Eve, an hour after I arrived in Austin.
1992. Operated out of my rental house in Austin. Became a distibutor of Briess malt.
1993. Bought a home in late 1992 and renovated the garage and added a large storage room, and sheds in the back yard. [The home loan was my first and last----5 more homes, 5 warehouses, and 5 acres of prime real estate, and another business were all purchased with cash from St Pats profits.]
1993. StPats.com website is launched. The first commercial website was one year earlier, 1992. There was no one in the alcohol industry with a website and very few worldwide.
1995. Online shopping. The first online shopping cart was one year earlier 1994. Amazon copied me in late '95.
1995. Opened a retail shop in downtown Austin. Closed in 2000. 
1995. Imported German Weyermann malt. I was the first retail shop to import malt from Europe.
1995. Organized Great Texas Beer Wine and Food Festival in April. Keynote speakers included Fritz Maytag, Michael Jackson and Pierre Celis. Organized a smaller beer festival in November--Beerfest '95. It was very cold and Austin American Statesman ran a photo with the caption "Brrrrrfest".
1995. Elected to the Master Brewers Association of America
1996. Bought a horse barn. Turned it into a 3000 sf warehouse with a loading dock.
1996. Imported containers of Czech Moravian Hana malt. I was the first US importer of Czech malt since ~1960. Moravian Hana barley is the most highly regarded brewing barley because it was the base for the first clear beer, Pilsner Urquell in 1840's. Hana barley is the genetic progenitor of all brewery barleys today.
1996. Conducted a tasting of Czech beers for the Austin Chronicle. Nearly every beer had never been in America before, and certainly none were legal. I can't remember all of them but they included Zubr, Lobkov, Budweiser Budvar, Bernard....
1996. Organized the Michael Jackson beer and whiskey tastings. The whiskey tasting drew 350 making it the largest Michael had ever done. The beer event this year and next included the following beers as well as many others: Young's Cask Conditioned Old Nick Barleywine (first time in America and even Michael had never had it), DeKonick (first time in America), Timmermans White Lambic (first in Texas), Hannen Alt, Alaskan Smoked Porter, Bellhaven Wee Heavy (first time in America and bottles didn't even have labels), King and Barnes Christmas 96, Maredsous Triple, and many others.
1997. Imported pellets and 100 kg bales of Czech hops---Saaz, Bor, and Sladek from Zatek, Bohemia.
1997. Imported drums of Czech malt extract, lighter in color than all other extracts.
1997. Imported Budvar malt, the malt to used make Budweiser Budvar. I received permission to import this malt from the Budvar head brewer, Josef Tovar. This was the first undermodifid malt available in North America for decades. Some commercial breweries bought the malt, including, ironically, Miller. The 150th anniversary of Miller was approaching and they wanted to make a beer similar to what the founder Frederick Miller would have made. The best part was the grain bags were labeled "BUD".
Here I am pouring half-liters at the Budvar Brewery bar.
1997. I was invited to the Czech Brewing conference in 1997 where I met the director of the Czech brewing and malting institute. All Czech brewing yeasts were kept there. He gave me the yeast strains of Budvar, Pilsner Urquell and Gambrinus. I sent them to my friend Dave Logsden of Wyeast to propagate. I had exlcusivity on those yeasts, including giving permission to breweries to use them until I got out of brewing in 2003. The strains are still maintained by Wyeast---numbers 2000, 2001, and 2002.
I was the largest distributor of Wyeast for many years. Wyeast was the original and largest liquid yeast supplier for the brewing industry. I refused to sell dry yeast for beer because liquid yeast cultures are superior. Never compromise on quality.
1997: Second year of Jackson tastings. Whiskey grew to over 400.
1998. The horse barn became 9000 sf. Moved out of my garage and into that space in November.
1999: Michael Jackson returned for grand opening of new shop. The Brewers Only Reception drew 25 Texas breweries, making it the largest gathering of Texas breweries at that time.
Brewers Only Party. Piere Celis in the center. Micheal Jackson on my right.
1999. Elected to the American Homebrewers Association board. First woman btw.
1999. Michael Jackson asked me to put him in touch with some breweries in the Czech Republic---he did not have any contacts. The malting company arranged a 12 day trip for Michael and I. We visited 4 malthouses and several breweries, and a barley farm. Unprecedented access to the Czech brewing industry. I am confident that there were no accurate accounts of the details of Czech brewing in North America until our visit.
[Coincidentally, Michael's World Guide to Beer was translated by a schoolmate of the head maltster, Petr, of the malthouse that made Budvar malt.]
Michael Jackson TV interview. As the spokesperson for the USA, I was asked some tough questions such as "What do Americans think of Czech beer?" Seated at table are malsters from 3 different Moravian maltings.
Open fermenters at Bernard Brewery. Open fermenters were still common in the Czech Republic.
Mash at Vyskov Brewery. There were 2 breweries in the country that were not returned to private owners after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. One was Budvar, the original Budweiser, to protect it from American Budweiser. The other was Vyskov.
~2000. Wrote articles about Czech brewing for Zymurgy, Southwest Brewing News, Brew Your Own magazine.
2002. Built another warehouse across the street. And leased another warehouse.
2002. Began importing commercial winery equipment. The first container of tanks rolled over in the ditch a mile from our warehouse. Another container sank to the bottom of the ocean. These happened in the same week! It has not happened again in 23 years.
2002. Obtained a beer and wine resale license. Spent $20K on refrigeration. Sold "Lynne's Favorite 130+ beers and Favorite 70+ wines." Our motto was "We drink all we can and sell the rest."
2003. St. Pat's customers have now colonized 74 countries.
Here is a partial list of unique items that I introduced to homebrewing. Many of them have not been available since I left homebrewing in 2003.
- Undermodified Budvar Malt--exclusive distributor
- Moravian Hana Malt--exclusive distributor
- Moravian Malt Extract--exclusive distributor
- Zatec Saaz, Bor, and Sladek hops--exclusive distributor
- Budweiser Budvar Yeast--exclusive distributor
- Pilsner Urquell H-Strain Yeast--exclusive distributor
- Gambrinus Yeast--exclusive distributor
- Wyeast 3068 Weinstephan yeast--exclusive distributor for first year
- Whitbread 1099 yeast--exclusive distributor for first year
- Marie’s Munich Extract---the only extract with a large portion of Munich malt for bocks/doppelbocks-----exclusive distributor
- Tequiza Agave Necatar---both clear and amber. --exclusive distributor
- Agave yeast--exclusive distributor
- 8 types of Honey including Wild Buckwheat, Tupelo, and Huajillo
- Prickly Pear Fruit--exclusive distributor
- Belgian Raspberry Juice
- Celis Coriander and curaco orange peel
- Akika Komachi Polished Rice from Momokawa Sake Brewery
- Koji and sake yeast
- Threaded Diffuser and Carbonation Stones
- Cobalt blue Wine and Beer Bottles
- 7 gallon glass carboys with stryofoam wrapping
- 3, 5 and 10 gallon soda kegs. 2000 per container from Korea.
Moving Up the Food Chain, 2002-2016
2002. I began importing commercial winery equipment. Crusher destemmers, pumps, and presses from Enoitalia and Zambelli. As well as filling machines and tanks. We shipped 100 commercial destemmers in summer of 2002.
Exclusive distributor of Enoitalia.
2003. July to September. We were shipping 30+ crates of destemmers, pumps, presses and tanks weekly. My homebrew business was still exploding. I was answering 1500+ homebrew emails weekly--and this was the slow season. We were routinely 400+ homebrew orders behind every Friday.
The handwriting was on the wall. I chose to be a little fish in the big pond of commercial winery equipment, rather than the biggest fish in the little pond of homebrewing. We got out of homebrewing completely that year, and home winemaking the following year.
My husband Don left UT in September and came to work with me.
2003. Became exclusive distributor of MEP and have been for over 23 years now.
2004. Bought another warehouse on same street.
2004. Largest US distributor of Tenco (Enolmatic/Enolmaster) and Zambelli.
July-September. Yellow Freight would drop off a trailer every Friday and we would fill it over the weekend.
2005. Added on to my second warehouse built in 2002. Total sf now at 35,000 in 3 warehouses.
2006. Became a distributor of Letina, the highest quality tank producer in Europe.
2008. Sales to distilleries---mostly tanks---became significant.
2009-13. We had a single hobby shop purchase 3 containers of Enoitalia, Zambelli, and Tenco products for 3 consecutive years. Only 1 in 2012. None after that. These were products for hobbyists that I did not sell. It was clear that the growth in small wineries would also decline in the near future. The identical trend occurred in homebrewing, but about 2 years behind.
2013. Moved St Pats to 50,000 sf warehouse bordering the San Antonio Airport.
The space allowed us to increase our tank inventory to over 3,000,000 liters.
2014. Tank sales (wineries, distilleries, breweries, kombucha, mead, chemicals, coffee, cider, hair dye) continue to explode.
August afternoon, 2014. Loading outbound trucks to Washington state, New York/Rhode Island, California, and Michigan.
2016. It was clear that the growth of new wineries had slowed. As my good friend Daniele of Enoitalia had noted years before, this pattern of tremendous growth leading to stagnate market, had repeated itself across nearly every European country.
Our Texas location was always at a disadvantage in supplying commercial wineries compared to being on the West Coast. California has been our largest market for winery equipment in 21 of 23 years, Baja the other 2. We first looked at warehouses near Sacramento in 2005 and as late as early 2000 just before the pandemic. It would have been a 2nd location because a single location in California would have been worse than Texas for distillery tanks, which were our largest single category and growing by 2016.
Therefore, I made the decision to discontinue harvest equipment including Enoitalia. I had picked olives with the Enoitalia family. I planned to buy an apartment from them on their property Poggio Tempesti. Very difficult decision.
Apartment under construction by Enoitalia.
Enoitalia's olive grove during harvest with netting on the ground.
2016-present. Focus on Quality and Long Term Stability
2016-2019. Sales were excellent but distilleries were increasingly carrying the load.
2018. My son Patrick (B.S. Engineering, Trinity University) begins working with us.
2019. Moved our business back to the Austin area. We owned two 50,000 sf warehouses, 2 homes, and 5 acres of prime real estate for over a year. I kept to my best advice, and did not borrow money.
50,000 sf warehouse in Taylor outside Austin.
2020. Pandemic. When the nationwide shutdown started, we had our first day in 29 years without a single order.
Fortunately, breweries, wineries and distilleries, as well as us, were classified as essential businesses so we could stay open. We had tanks trucked into Brooklyn when the city was shutdown. We stamped every small box with "Essential Business" to make sure they got to their destination.
We had a couple of large tank installations at new distilleries early in the year. We had 30+ breweries and distilleries order tanks for hand sanitizer production. 2020 turned out to be a good year.
2021-2023 There was a drop off in 2021 followed by a jump in 2022. This was likely do to companies sitting on cash during 2021.
2024. New website replaced our 31 year old website. Sales grew.
2025. Sales declined because we did not sell any custom tanks. The uncertainty and fluctuation in tariffs made it impossible to provide a quote.
Beer, wine and spirits industries are now saturated. But we remain confident, because we positioned ourselves for this 10 years earlier.
We narrowed our product line to tanks, filtration, valves and fittings, and MEP small bottling equipment. We sincerely believe that in each of these categories, we offer as good or better quality than any distributor. In addition, with the exception of MEP, our product lines are used by many industries outside beer, wine, and spirits.
2026. Tariffs on tanks are set at 65% (50% steel and 15% reciprocal). Wine, beer and spirits sales are depressed across the board. However, there are still many smart, businesses doing well and growing. And, of course, the really smart ones are buying from me!
Cheers!
