After 12 years as a research scientist for the government, Shane Juhl dropped everything to take his love of brewing beer to the next level. Now with a 130-year-old building turned into a thriving brewery and taproom, Juhl’s beer experiments are now some of the most popular brews in the heart of Dayton.
“You have to do what you think you’ll love doing forever. I’d do it differently if I had to do it again, but I’d still do it again in a heartbeat,” Juhl said.
Toxic is all about big beers, with the average ABV being eight percent. The name Toxic came from an experiment gone wrong in Juhl’s home brewing days, where instead of a tasty concoction he was left with a sludge he called, “liquid gold.”
“We didn’t even know what was in it at that point,” Juhl said. “Someone called the mixture ‘toxic,’ and I was like, 'There it is!'”
Unsure if the name would turn off customers or not, Juhl came to the conclusion that five percent were going to hate the name, 15 percent would drink the beer purely because of the name and the other 80 percent wouldn’t care what the name was, all they would want is quality craft beer and that he could serve them.
“All I want is better beer and more of it,” Juhl said. “Day to day, nobody should notice the difference between your beers, but year-to-year, they should. They should come back and say, “This is better.” It takes slow changes to get your beer right-on. You should critique your product to the fullest.”
