Sara Santiago, president of Milwaukee-based Roll Mobile, has been a beer lover and fan of home brewing for a long time. Santiago says a trip to New Belgium Brewery in Colorado instilled in her the passion to not only improve her everyday business but also to start a home brewing hobby with her family.
“I’ve always admired the spirit of micro-breweries and craft brewers,” Santiago said. “After visiting New Belgium Brewery I realized that their corporate culture was really something we can all interject into our own businesses and learn a lot from.”
Santiago and her husband Agustin decided to use their home brew hobby to teach their two children a little bit about entrepreneurial spirit, science and marketing.
“We started a community garden in our backyard a few years ago. We let the kids name it and decide what we planted in it,” Santiago said.
The garden now supplies enough food to feed their family, some of their neighbors, friends and even the local food pantry.
“It’s a great way to teach the kids that you can make or grow anything that you want,” she said. “We decided to do the same with brewing.”
Santiago’s children Grace, 7, and Nora, 5, were involved in the brewing process from beginning to end, Santiago said.
“They loved it. We taught them the importance of sanitization of the equipment and let them help mix, stir and bottle the beer,” Santiago said. “We even let the kids name our brewery and help with label designs and ways to ‘market’ the beer to friends and family.”
The family obviously isn’t planning to sell the beer, but Grace did come up with the name NMB Brewery, Santiago said.
“It stands for Nerds Making Beer, which is absolutely perfect for our family.”
The Santiago family recently finished making a NMB Crème Ale and plans to pursue an IPA recipe next.
“The girls don’t get to enjoy the fruits of their labor, so we are planning to make and bottle a root beer they can enjoy in the near future,” Santiago said.
