On a tip from an aspiring craft brewer, Ken learned of a beautiful, hand-made, 100-barrel, copper brewhouse for sale out of a defunct brewery in Germany. Ken and his high school friend Dave Sheetz traveled to Germany and helped dismantle the brewhouse piece by piece. The German workers laughed that the Americans would never get it back together. Ken had the brewhouse shipped to California, but it was another three years before he could afford to install it in the new brewery.