Sometimes all it takes is a little nudge from your wife to realize a dream you never fully knew you had. That’s exactly what lies at the foundation of our friend and member Tidal Brewing Company’s story.

Dave and Maxine Peitzman were both teaching science at a local charter school, toying with the idea of combining their love of craft beer and science and opening a craft brewery. In 2018, Tidal Brewing Company in Spring Hill, Florida, came into being. Maxine quickly realized that Tidal was where Dave’s true passion lay and encouraged him to quit teaching and focus his efforts full time on the brewery.

“She knew that teaching biology wasn’t a long-term prospect as far as a career for me, she had gotten into craft beer too, knew it was something I was good at, and one day she said to me ‘this is just something you need to do,’” Dave shared.

The whole motivation behind Tidal Brewing was to create that local watering hole, a true community center, for the area. The Peitzmans have visited breweries all over the United States, and even in Europe, and a big thing they noticed was that there was a sort of communal feeling to them.

“We just kind of had this feeling that we wanted to start that on our own, and have people come in here that love the place, be able to sit here, talk, and just kind of create an environment where people could come relax, have a beer or two and actually converse with people,” Dave said.

It took some time to get the business off the ground, and of course, like any small business, there were challenges to overcome, but Dave and Maxine’s dream is well into its second year of success.

“What I’ve learned about running a small business is that what you think you will be doing when you start is not what you do. It’s constantly evolving, it’s a living, breathing thing. It’s fun because it’s never the same,” Dave said.

From start to finish, local is key to Tidal Brewing. When brewing, Dave’s goal is to create a quality beer featuring local ingredients whenever possible. “My whole litmus test is if I don’t like it and won’t drink it, I won’t put it on tap,” he said. To that end, over the course of his brewing career, only one batch out of 120 attempts hasn’t met Dave’s strict standards. We think that’s a pretty good indicator of success!

Like many small businesses, Tidal measures success by answering two simple questions–are we building a core, local customer base and are those customers, as well as new customers, loving and buying our product?

Be sure to check out how the dream of Dave and Maxine came true by visiting Tidal Brewing Company.

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