The History of Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company

Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company is the brain-child of Mark and Leslie Henderson. Born and raised in Mississippi, the couple met in college and moved to the Gulf Coast in 2000 to pursue careers in engineering. The first steps toward the founding of Lazy Magnolia happened one Christmas when Leslie bought mark a homebrew kit because she couldn\'t think of anything else to get him! Mark reflects that this was very similar to the time his little sister bought him a Cabbage Patch Doll for Christmas - she really didn\'t buy it for him.

Mark only got to brew one batch of beer before Leslie took over the brewing operations leaving Mark to design new equipment, tools, and gadgets to make the brewing process go smoother. It didn\'t take long for this hobby to take over the house and all of their free time. \"We were brewing twice every weekend, and we were giving away almost everything that we brewed to friends,\" laments Leslie. The house was completely taken over with 5-gallon glass jugs, copper heat exchangers, and bubbling buckets of beer as they explored dozens of variations on their own special recipes.

Friends and family were so impressed with the homemade creations that they encouraged the couple to go pro. Many even offered to invest in such a venture. At this point Mark and Leslie started doing some serious research to answer some basic questions about the legal status of breweries in Mississippi and the potential market for specialty beer in the state. Much to their surprise, all answers came back positive. The time seemed to be ripe for Mississippi to join the rest of the nation in the craft beer revolution.

Leslie entered the American Brewers Guild Brewing School in July 2003 and followed this up with an apprenticeship at Crescent City Brewhouse in the spring of 2004. During this time, Mark was hard at work developing a business plan, performing market research, designing logos, securing financing, and searching for just the right location for the company. Leslie worked on recipe development and searched the nation for high quality brewing equipment to scale up the recipes from 5-gallons to 500-gallons per batch.

The schedule progressed rapidly after Leslie\'s internship. A building was secured in September 2004; the brewing equipment was delivered in October and fully set-up by December. The dream became a reality in January 2005, when the first batch of beer was brewed on the Lazy Magnolia system. The first kegs of beer hit the market on the Gulf Coast in March 2005. Hurricane Katrina briefly shut down operations and destroyed the couple\'s home, but beer was flowing again by October.

As of June 2006, Lazy Magnolia was distributing beers throughout Mississippi.