Sitdown with Success is a feature of the Huntsville Business Journal on entrepreneurs and their keys to success. This month’s focus is on Innerspace Brewery and owner Stewart Money’s success in opening one of Huntsville’s more unique brewery experiences.

Huntsville is proving to be a rising star in the brewery scene. Alongside the bigger players such as Straight to Ale, Rocket Republic, and Yellowhammer are some can’t-miss hidden gems, one of which is InnerSpace Brewing Company, founded by Stewart Money in 2015.

Located at 2414 Clinton Ave. W, InnerSpace isn’t flashy on the outside, but the interior is packed with character, referred to by one customer as “geek chic.” Given the fun and colorful Star Wars, Star Trek, NASA, and space-themed decor throughout, the description is fitting.

A shelf packed with board games for kids and adults invites visitors to settle in for fun activities, while a huge screen on one wall is equally likely to feature movies, college football games, or science presentations by guest speakers.

Although Money originally wanted to be an astronaut, engineer, or pilot, his time as a student at Auburn University led him in a different direction early on. “It turned out I was terrible at math and I was godawful at chemistry…it just wasn’t my thing,” he explained.

He ultimately earned a degree in history, but his continuing interest in spaceflight led Money to earn a master’s in Science, Technology and Public Policy at George Washington University where he ended up working at the Space Policy Institute with Dr. John Logsdon, who served on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board following the loss of the Space Shuttle and as a member of the NASA Advisory Council.

Money later returned to Huntsville to work at his family’s construction equipment business, Joe Money Machinery Co., which his grandfather founded in 1937. After working there for a number of years, he explained that business was slowing down as a result of the recession of 2008 and he was ready to do something else.

Following the close of the Space Shuttle era, Money’s continued interest in space and space policy led him to venture into freelance writing and he ended up writing a book on the early years of SpaceX.

“This was before SpaceX was quite where they are right now, so I got familiar with some people at SpaceX, just kind of deep dived into the history of how it interfaced with basically the policies that allowed them to do what they did.”

Alabama’s easing of homebrewing laws led Money to begin honing his craft, but the seed was planted during a trip to Munich in 2009. “We were really drawn to the breweries in Munich,” Money recalled, describing a visit to the Löwenbräu brewery. “Watching how people interacted with each other at these breweries was really eye-opening to us. There were a lot of tourists, there were also a lot of Bavarians, native Germans, residents of Munich…it was so family-friendly.”

Money described the brewery scene there as the “warmest, most welcoming atmosphere…it was genuine.”

“It really just started the ball rolling early on,” he continued. “That sort of set the stage as our perception of what a brewery was or could be.” InnerSpace, he later explained, has been family friendly since the beginning. “It’s the Huntsville interpretation of what we loved most about what we saw in Munich.”

The decision to open the brewery came about at a point when Money was ready to do something different and his family was on hand to help with its establishment. Although his wife is a nurse at UAB in Birmingham and they live halfway between there and Huntsville, Money deliberately chose Huntsville for the site of InnerSpace. “We wanted to do a brewery but I wanted to do it in Huntsville because of what Huntsville is.”

“We could have opened a brewery in Birmingham but I wanted to be across the counter from the engineers and scientists and the people that come into Huntsville,” he said. “It was as much about opening a space-themed brewery as it was about opening a brewery.”

Money explained the naming of the brewery: it encapsulated the essence of Huntsville and was a riff on the term used by Timothy Leary–rather than referring to the inner space discovered through the use of LSD, however, Money connected it to Huntsville’s role in the future exploration of space, saying that it will be an internal decision made by those who choose to explore.

InnerSpace, like other businesses in Huntsville, faced one of its greatest challenges with the pandemic. “No one has it in their business plan,” Money said. Apart from that, he said, just starting a small business is a challenge: “you really do not know what you don’t know and you have to just almost develop an insane commitment to making things work no matter what the cost.”

“If anybody had full knowledge, perfect knowledge of the challenges they might have in starting a small business, I don’t think anybody ever would,” he said.

Money noted that his two sons helped him start the business, and although they left at different points, one of them returns periodically to help. He added that he and his wife built the tables and the bar, as well as installing the pizza oven and building the bar around it.

“We didn’t necessarily want it to be small, but we wanted it to be an independent, family owned and operated brewery that was very clear on what our mission was, what our customer base was, what our brand was,” Money said. “So the brand comes through with the beer too, I think…the beer’s super important. We had not entertained discussions about bringing it to outside investors and things like that because we wanted to be this, whatever it is, for all its flaws.”

As for the sci-fi and space theme, “We kind of bet on Huntsville being exactly what Huntsville is. I mean, we couldn’t have done this in a lot of other places…we could have opened it in maybe Cape Canaveral, maybe some other places like Houston, but this is very much a calculated and lucky bet on our part, on Huntsville being what makes Huntsville great.”

“We just sort of wanted to embody that, make a little place where people were welcome and comfortable,” Money added.

Money stated that one of the most gratifying aspects of his job is when customers come in and notice changes. He said that there was a list of “geeky, fun, stupid” things they wanted to do when they started and they’re 10% done with the list.