Today, the first day of Women’s History Month, I am very excited to introduce the Triple Bottom Womxn’s Collective — a series of salons and pop-ups featuring amazing womxn-owned and led businesses throughout Philly. Beer to me is about community and bringing people together across experiences to share joy.

The Triple Bottom Womxn’s Collective advances our commitment to building community, with a focus on supporting women and women-identifying folks working hard to make a positive impact on Philly.

It’s officially been one wonderful month since we opened Triple Bottom. Since then, there’s barely been time to eat and shower, much less pause and reflect. I’m so grateful to every one of you who has come by to have a beer. We love meeting you, getting to know our regulars, seeing you all bring such good vibes into the space, and hearing your ideas and advice as we keep trying to make Triple Bottom better. This community of neighbors, collaborators, and visitors from far and wide has been tremendously generous and welcoming to us, and we are so fortunate to be a part of it.

I’m trying to find a metaphor to describe the energy and exhaustion and willpower and teamwork that define these last few weeks for us. It feels like a relay, maybe, except we’re all carrying a whole bunch of batons and people from the crowd are handing us more, and also helping us carry some of them, and we’re out of breath, and laughing at how mad this is, and everything is happening all the time. It’s mostly great, but we could all use a three-day nap.

Triple Bottom is about being home. It’s a promise that we’ll do our best to help you feel welcome with us, no matter where your real home is. It’s the comfort that you can count on us to always have your favorite beer in the fridge (well, on tap). And it’s an aspiration that we hope to be a community center, just as our community has been central to who we are and how we’re building Triple Bottom.

Our new logo holds all of these ideas in its simple lines. It’s a celebration of Philadelphia — from the skyline of Center City to the row houses of West Poplar and Passyunk, Fishtown and Fairmount, Kensington and Point Breeze.

Last week was a heck of a week. At the end of it, our brewing system was sitting safely in our brewery, getting comfortable and staying out of the way as we continue to do other work in the space. It is SO beautiful. We keep touching the tanks gently as we walk past them, as if it’s hard for us to believe that they are really ours. That, before too long, they’ll be filled with delicious beer.

Our new brewing system is arriving in the next month or so, so our brew day last weekend was also our last hurrah on our pilot system. Now it’s all hands on deck to get our space ready to receive our new tanks. But we didn’t want to move on to our bigger, better brewing system without honoring the time we’ve spent with our pilot system. It’s the system that got us started.

My fire is the belief that when people care about each other, with open eyes and open hearts, our world is better.

Triple Bottom is the result of my fire, and Bill’s fire, and Kyle’s fire. It’s a place where people can take care of each other, in small and big ways: a delicious beer, a joyful moment, the dignity of a meaningful job. It’s a place that celebrates all that Philly is: a city of believers, advocates, fighters, survivors, caregivers, creatives, explorers, learners, and leaders. We all have fire in us. So if, like me, you have been feeling pretty rough these last few weeks, I hope you find your fire. Take care of yourself, and each other. Do something great. Do something good. We’re here, cheering you on.

Have you ever wired nearly $100k to someone in another country and hoped for the best? If you have, odds are you’ve also started a brewery. If not, I envy you the sleep you haven’t lost over the last few days. Evidently, it can take almost a week for the wire to go through, so I’ve basically been holding my breath for days, hoping that I didn’t read any account numbers wrong.

All this stress means something big has happened: we just ordered our brewing equipment!

Last weekend, we poured beers at 915 Spring Garden for the first time, and it was amazing to see our home come alive. We got the chance to share our space and our plans with a handful of supporters who have been with us since day one. With caution tape all around us, and new holes in the floors and walls (yay for progress!), we poured a tripel, stout, and Kyle’s newest IPA, snacked on our favorite pizza, and imagined what Triple Bottom Brewing Company is going to look and feel like when we open our doors. Spoiler: it’s going to be really great. Even with wires popping out of the walls in strange places and giant pieces of construction equipment tucked here and there, this already feels like a place we want to hang out in with you.

These last few weeks have been really exciting for Triple Bottom, and we’ve been trying to figure out the best way to share some of our excitement with you. A lot of the momentum that’s building isn’t something we can polish up and put in an eye-catching social media image. It’s not always even directly related to beer, because Triple Bottom is so much bigger than beer.