Bud Ransom grew up in Bellingham, WA before moving to Seattle to attend Cornish College as a music composition major. Through college and after graduating he worked as a craft cocktail bartender, until 2016 when he founded Ravenna Brewing Company with his sister and brother-in-law. As owner and operations manager he’s guided their growth from a tiny nanobrewery into the award-winning distribution microbrewery and taproom they are today.

Key Points Summary by Michelle Lee

Bud did bartending while going to Cornish College.  He and his sister, Elise, had been thinking about starting some sort of eatery like a café, while his brother-in-law, Tommy, was a home brewer accumulating recipes and winning awards…… thus the three of them founded a brewery.

They found a location in the Ravenna neighborhood.  The space was in rough condition and no plumbing, but it was cheap.  They did not have any cash flow and basically did the tenant improvement themselves through watching YouTube videos.  Bud and his dad did the drawing themselves with an architectural scale ruler to apply for permit.  During construction, Bud made sure he would stop and talk to anybody who came by, showed them the progress and talked about what beer were being brewed.  This interrupted the progress but helped build neighborhood support that growlers were filled even before the official opening.   

Thanks to a post on Seattle Reddit, the line went out the door and around the block on the grand opening date April 15, 2016.  The brewery only opened from Thursday to Sunday in the beginning, then added Wednesday in August and then had its first trivia Tuesday in January 2017.  After the first year build out and six months in operation, Bud, Elise and Tommy finally got their first paychecks.

In mid-2018, their landlord told them the next door space was available.  They might not be ready to expand and they also knew that they had to take over the space which might not be available again.  The extra space could also help solve the capacity problem, they could not brew fast enough especially for the very busy summer.  In August 2019, their expansion was completed.  Their fermentation capacity increased almost 3 times from 868 gallons to 2,263 gallons.  They thought that they would have a smooth and easy summer in 2020.

Then it same the pandemic shutdown on March 15, 2020.  They knew that they needed to continue the momentum and served their customers.  They did not shut down for one day and kept working on the growler machine. With the loyal neighborhood support, they had beer-to-go.  To survive the pandemic, they did not rest and stayed aggressive.  In August and October 2020, they further increased their fermentation capacity to 3,441 gallons and added automatic canning line to meet the pandemic induced demand for to-go beer and diversify to wholesale.

Again in November 2020, during the second big wave of pandemic, another next door space became available for sale, they knew that they needed to make it happen.  The additional space will serve as a brewing space, a private party space and office space, so that Bud and Elise do not need to work from their backpack anymore. The fermentation capacity will be 5,983 gallon, almost 7 times the original capacity, when this expansion is completed in August 2021.

Why it worked:

• Service at the forefront of everything – Bud is sensitive in cultivating a warm and welcoming atmosphere and in building the community.
• Partnership with opposing strengths, but equal drive – Tommy and Bud are different people, “without Tommy, they could not open the brewery; without Bud and Elise, the brewery would have been burnt down by now”. 
• Hire the person, not the resume – only 3 people quit in their 5-year history due to moving to Colorado or finding a full time job for what they went to college for.
• Don’t be afraid to be trendy – they brew what people want and have not repeated a recipe.
• Empower, reward, and retain talent – employee are allowed to have flexible working hours to go back to school or part time, can move to operation management or distribution if interested.

According to one review on Yelp:

Excellent beer, excellent people. This neighborhood brewery worked hard to spruce up a small shop into a great place to enjoy some beer. As of opening weekend they have come out with some inventive brews such as a Jalapeño Kölsch, a Peach Hefeweizen, and a Bourbon Vanilla Porter. Don’t let the fancy names scare you off though. Clean, balanced flavors and reasonable prices rule here; they pour both 16oz pints (around $5-6) and 5oz tasters (around $2-2.5). Growler fills coming soon; their supply needs to catch up with their overwhelming opening weekend demand.

While they don’t have a kitchen, they have partnered with food trucks who park right outside and serve their wares.

Come by, say hello, have a beer, and enjoy!

We are now planning to resume The Big Taste event in April 2022–after a two-year layoff.

To host a fun and fundraising community tasting event, best-matched for what we’ve successfully produced in the past at Hanger 30 at Magnuson Park, we’re agreeing to look for The Big Taste to occur next in 2022 – probably on a Saturday in April, but possibly early May or late March.

Our beneficiary is Outdoors for All. In support of that, here’s a photo of Milo and his parents. Club member and Outdoors for All Executive Director Ed Bronsdon met them recently at Magnuson Park as they were using one of the many adaptive cycles, a Duet Tandem, that Outdoors for All has in their fleet. Ed reported that, “Due to public health restrictions, it had been eighteen months since Milo and his family had last been able to be active with our Adaptive Cycling Center. Milo had fun – but his parents, Erik and Kim, I think were even more joyous in getting outdoors together as a family. They noted that they plan to be back regularly now that we are able to be back up and operational and really appreciated the ride with us. The Outdoors for All Staff were sure smiling, too!”

Date – Time – Place

Sunday, June 6, 2021, 5:00 PM, at the Seattle Yacht Club (1807 E. Hamlin Street, Seattle, WA 98112 — 206-325-1000)

Business casual attire appropriate.  No blue jeans per SYC dress code.

RSVP required (to Nancy Bittner 206-595-9620) by Monday, May 24th!

If you have not already been called, please call or text Nancy if you plan to attend.  She will need to know what choice you would like for your dinner entree, either beef, fish, or vegetarian.

Cost – Payment – Money Q&A’s

Dinner is $65/person.  Payment by credit card or check the night of the event.

CASH is needed to purchase “script” if you wish to purchase wine, beer, hard alcohol, or soft drink prior to dinner.  Wine will be provided with dinner.  CASH will also be needed to purchase raffle tickets which are $5 each or 5 for $20.

HOW CAN YOU CONTRIBUTE?

We would appreciate every member to procure or buy a gift card or donate a nice bottle of wine (or scotch) for the raffle.  You decide the amount that works for you.  As in every fundraising event, including this one, there will be a RAISE THE PADDLE component.  Please put some thought into this and give what fits into your budget.  (Last year we raised a record $11,000 in this category & that was virtually!  Let’s see if we can beat that this year!)

The most important thing of all is to HAVE FUN in the fellowship of Rotary!

Imagine an imminent America where citizens are bombarded with personalized political messages from every smart device – yet information is so suspect, nobody can tell what the truth is.

The coronavirus pandemic provided a foretaste of an infuriating, dystopian future. From the start Americans fought over the most basic facts of the crisis, from death tolls to quack cures to the wisdom of stay-at-home orders. The splintered digital infosphere bred confusion and delusion, some of it fatal. Now think of our campaigns and elections. The digital information age means more than hyper-targeted, just-for-you messages from insurance companies and presidential candidates alike. It means oceans of disinformation engineered to sow false beliefs or simply disorient.

Big Data is on the way to fueling information environments so fine-tuned, no two of us hold the same view of reality, and no two voters hear the same pitch. Already, citizens don’t know who to trust or what to believe – about COVID-19 or anything else. If we ask nothing more of tech providers or digital citizens, the fog will continue to thicken. Irritation will merge into despair and then numbness… and democracy teeters.

Digital pioneer Cyrus Krohn knows the territory, and in Bombarded: How to Fight Back Against the Online Assault on Democracy, Krohn locates the roots of our blooming political chaos. But he goes beyond recounting 25 years of destabilizing Internet shock waves and rolls out a provocative action plan for rescuing the American system of campaigns and elections while there is still time.

Bombarded was recently selected as a finalist for INDIE “Book of the Year” by Foreword Reviews.

You can get the book on Amazon here. Learn more about the book here.

Key Points Summary by Michelle Lee

After interning at the White House, working on CNN’s Larry King Live and Crossfire, Cyrus has insights about social media and privacy.

In 1996, Bill Gates predicated the media on paper would be out.  Nowadays, we have social media instead.  Contrary to the clean broadcast debate such as Crossfire, there is no single source of truth or no reliable narrator on social media.

Regarding privacy, our consumer purchase habit and financial well-being collected as 3000 attributes, can be easily bought.  This was what Cambridge Analytica bought for about 300 million Americans from Facebook.  Technology is being built, data are being harvested and used for political campaigns.

There are two major laws tech companies follow – CCPA from California and GDPR from EU.  Washington State tried to pass a state privacy law in 3 attempts but failed.  Cyrus would like to see a Federal Data Privacy Act.  It would be difficult for businesses if there are 50 from the states.

Cyrus also thinks that government and civic education should be added back to the curriculum.  So that people will know how our government functions and be active and viable participants.  Lastly, he encourages us to participate in local journalism, attending school boards and city councils meetings, write and publish the facts, as most of the local newspapers are lost and people use social media for local news.    

From the Seattle Times, April 23, 2021.

My grandfather once told me that a smart person knows what they don’t know and is willing to admit it in order to get proper advice. So why are 40% of the Mariners so stupid as to refuse to get vaccinated?

This story should be on the front page.

David Mushen

Thanks to Jim Horrigan for spotting this.

“The paradox of our time in history is that we’ve learned how to make a better living, but not a better life. We have more conveniences but less time, wider freeways but narrower viewpoints, more medicine but less wellness. We’ve been to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor or to help a stranger in need. We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice.

So put down the phone and the remote, and look at the world around you. Spend time with your loved ones, because they won’t be around forever. Take the time to make a new friend, to say a kind word, to do something selfless. And always remember, life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by those moments that take our breath away.”

           – George Carlin