Trent Fargher

CFO/COO, Shades of Pale Brewing

Salt Lake City

Growing up in Toledo Ohio in the 70 and 80's didn't provide much in the terms of beer as the younger generation knows today. A wall of American style lagers of which most no longer exist was the option. During my formative years at Kent State University I discovered Samuel Smiths Oatmeal Stout. It was transformative to say the least. I never knew beer could look, smell or tasted like that. Not soon after that fateful night life got in the way and back to light beers once again. No dark beers to be found in North Carolina after relocating for work.

4 years later I f found myself living in Colorado once again the passion for beer returned. My parents gave me a beer in a bag gift for Christmas. The year was 1994 and my home brewing adventures began. Half the fun of home brewing at that time was finding the ingredients and equipment there were no local home brew shops like today, no Amazon, no online shopping only yellow pages and those pages weren't filled with home brew shops. Certainly not in Breckenridge Colorado.

Again life got in the way and it was time to grow up and quit skiing every day. I changed careers in 2000 and moved away from accounting to Information Technology going to work on the y2k bug in Redwood California at Oracle's head quarters. Shortly thereafter I was assigned a project in Venezuela finding the country's only brewery Polar. After a year I was assigned another project in England where I drank some very interesting cask beers with names such as Storm Damage and Witches Brew pouring directly from a long draw system in the cellar. This was when Stella was Stella prior to Inbev and you could get a Guinness regular or extra cold on tap. I was in heaven.

After returning from England my home brew changed quite drastically. Once again time to get a move on and continuing the passion for beer and skiing. I moved to Park City Utah. There is a reason the license plates have greatest snow on earth embossed on them. The state bird should be a skier. Skiing, home brewing and IT what could be better? Life was good, Utah beer in those days not so good. I missed Colorado beer. Then in 2008 the dreaded collapse of the market, recession and IT was turned on its head. I had to lay off my team and as that happened my number was getting closer and closer. I knew the time had come my head was on the block. Lucky for me IT paid well and my expenses were low, all travel and food were covered each week. I was set to wait it out but the prior year the company I worked for Rapidigm was sold to Fujitsu and the fun of IT with it. I didn't want to go back, didn't know what to do. My wife said start a brewery, ya right start a brewery how many wives tell their husbands to start a brewery? No better time to start a company than in a recession right? Oct 2009 came and with that we became professional brewers obtaining our TTB Notice. Oh my God what do I do now, I know absolutely nothing about commercial brewing and here we are today. Who would have thought that brew in a bag Christmas gift in 1994 would lead to 2 Great American Beer Festival gold medals in 2018 and 2019?