Sworn Brewing a Year Later – A Sit Down with Jesse and Amanda

Sworn Brewing (photo courtesy of Sworn Brewing Company)

Sworn Brewing One Year Later

Its been just over a year since we visited Sworn Brewing in Mechanicsburg, PA and got to hang out with owners Jesse and Amanda. As we came to see them about their grand opening and pick their brains about the new brewery, this time we came to pick their brains one year later on. On the verge of their first anniversary, their one year anniversary, we stopped in – Josh, Amy, and myself (Ben), to take a seat with them, outside in the gorgeous (super) sunny weather.

(See: Getting Sworn In – A Sneak Peek at Sworn Brewing Company)

Just like we did with that article, we are breaking down this article as well, taking a look at it from the perspectives of Josh, Amy, and Ben; with each of us writing a section. (As a preview of how we did it, here’s a look back at the Getting Sworn In article):

The Set – Up

Amanda and Jesse are married and co – owners of Sworn Brewing Company. Jesse is also head brewer. We heard about them opening up their new brewery in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and I reached out to Amanda when I saw a post of hers’ on one of the beer groups. We locked down a meeting date – July 24th, 2023 – and all set to go. So Josh, Amy, and myself met with Amanda and Jesse and got a walk through and a sneak peek look at the upcoming brewery.

For this article, I’m going to let Josh start us off, then switch over to Amy, and then I’ll wrap things up and conclude the article. Please let us know in the comments section what you think of this, and if you like how this article looks and reads. (Josh and I did a similar article when we got a behind the scenes look at Mellow Mink – and Amy and I did similar with a sneak peek of The Beerded Goat).

Getting Sworn In – A Sneak Peek at Sworn Brewing Company

And just like with that article, I’m going to let Josh start things off, then we’ll tag Amy in, and then I’ll wrap things up.

Josh – Getting Sworn Into Dedication

Token to Midnight by Sworn Brewing Company

On a very warm, sunny and oddly rainless day in Central Pennsylvania, Ben, Amy & myself sat down outside of a little brewery nearing its one year anniversary with two of our friends to discuss how far 365 days have brought them. Those two friends are the husband and wife team that run Sworn, Jesse & Amanda Mills.

While drinking in their company and beer, we learned a thing or two about what happens to a brand new brewery that was set up and dedicated to providing excellent craft beer. Wait a second, has it actually been a year already? Almost from the day the brewery launched back in August of 2023, the writing team of Ben, Amy, and myself have been jonesing for Sworn’s one year anniversary. Why? Because when Jesse & Amanda invited the three of us to sit down with them just before their official opening, we all felt a similar sense that whatever this new brewery was going to be, it was going to run roughshod over everyone’s expectations. And that’s just what’s happened.

In a repurposed garage, then catering outfit, now burgeoning micro brewery nestled behind Atlantis Pools on E Trindle Road, Sworn has become the destination that beer nerds clamor for parking spaces four days a week. As mild-mannered and laid back as brewmaster Jesse aims to be, his beer and patrons tend to be the exact opposite when it comes to speaking to an incredible talent located in Mechanicsburg. A constantly rotating beer list should be an indicator there’s been no shortage of foot traffic when the doors are open, but that’s really just a fraction of the story.

From the outset, the mission statement is a simple one for Sworn: Make the best beer possible and keep that promise. Period. And how does one do that, you might ask? While there are many ways to answer this question, I can really only think of two answers. One, be Jesse Mills. Two, and on a more serious note, keep batches small and pay absolute attention to even the smallest of details. But that’s the everyday vision. When pressed for the five and ten year plans, Jesse gave us an answer with real gravity to it. Five years out, there is no plan to expand the brewery. You may scoff, but this is on purpose. In fact, everything about Sworn is purpose driven and calculated. In a time where breweries seem to be closing as fast as they open, a level headed approach to a new business is what’s needed. Not spending money on things that only look fancy, yet ultimately do not add to the bottom line is something that the Mills have avoided and intend to keep it that way. Ten years out … admittedly, ten years out is a long way to look, but if the past year is any kind of template for the success Sworn has achieved, then the years to come are bright indeed.

From opening the doors for the first time, pouring at the Hoppy Valley Brewfest, to collaborating with some of PA’s biggest and best breweries, Sworn is here to stay. Happy One Year Anniversary, Amanda and Jesse. Forever may your fermenters be full and your lines be long.

Amy – Getting Sworn Into Quality

Sworn Brewing Mexican Lager

Am I too much when I tell you I am writing my article about Sworn Brewing company while wearing my Sworn Brewing company shirt? It’s seriously a comfy shirt. It’s not your regular T-shirt that after a few good washings softens up, it was a well-made T shirt. I could live in this T-shirt.
Every time I am walking into Sworn, I think of the quote from their Facebook page “We will strive to make sure the highest quality items we can get our hands on will be used in every single process. Everything that comes out of our taps, every single small batch of beer that we make will go through a rigorous quality control process. If it does not meet our standards, it will never be consumed by the customer. We are not here to cut corners, we are here to make sure we can provide you with the best possible experience that you deserve, what the craft brewing industry deserves!”
I still remember quoting this a year ago and we are delighted to celebrate the 2 years of Sworn Brewing Company. Each time I see how quickly their beer kicks or a standing room only Friday night I can’t clap hard enough, and I can’t wear this comfy T-shirt any more proudly.
Every aspect of Sworn Brewing company embodies this level of quality in all their products. When Sworn Brewing posts a beer was just tapped you need to leave your house immediately or you aren’t going to get to taste it. Jesse
brews the beer in manageable smaller quantities, it keeps the impeccable quality on point.
We sampled several different brews they had on tap during our visit last month. They are probably long gone by now. But you’d also hope that, so the beer is always fresh. I also tried a glass of the house made non-alcoholic
cream ale. It lasted maybe 30 seconds in front of me. Having non-alcoholic options is inclusive for whatever the reason. (See: I’ve Missed Drinking A Lot.)
On our visit we also enjoyed some of the beloved queso. This house made queso is the perfect pairing with Sworn beer. I do believe the boyfriend understands this is a must order each time we frequent Sworn. It seems natural to wonder why they aren’t expanding and growing? The question stemming from Jesse and Amanda was “why?” And the obvious, they won’t let the level of quality decrease in the slightest. Why not consider how detail oriented their attempt at brewery perfection is?

Ben – Getting Sworn Into Craftsmanship

Sworn Brewing

I get to see Jesse and Amanda fairly often at work, and when I get the chance I break away and stand around chatting with them for quite a while. We talk shop, the business, the industry; we brainstorm ideas like creating a tap handle out of an old PlayStation or NES controller for their “Gamer” series of beers. Amanda will tell me how we need to start up a podcast – which we do – and which we are constantly planning on doing – and we get to chatting about new beers at my work, as well as at their brewery, etc.

The biggest thing we would discuss is how we needed to do a follow up article for them. Discussing their one year mark. How everything has changed – or nothing has changed. (And in that year, a lot has and hasn’t changed.) We’ve gotten to stop over at Sworn’s brewery in Mechanicsburg several times in the course of the year, we’ve gotten to hang out with them at the Hoppy Valley Brewfest, they’ve grown in what they sell for beer, for drinks, for merch, and even doing crowlers and growlers.

Speaking of growlers… we come to the one (and seemingly only) regret Jesse really has of their first year of operation. When asked, and prodded about what he would change; he said he would go back and not sell those growlers. (But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.)

Amy and I arrived about 5 – 10 minutes after Josh, who was already a stout deep; we joined him and then Jesse and Amanda outside in the beautiful sunny patio area. Over the past year I’ve become horrible with checking into beers on Untappd, even going full brewery visits without checking into beers, but throughout the course of our time there in the late July days, we (between myself, Amy, and Josh) got the entire board of beers. And that list ran the gambit from a stout, to IPAs, to pale ales, a Mexican lager, and a sour. All were – as always – fantastic.

Some of the various topics we discussed were things like collaborations. Like their recently completed collaboration – Storm the Field – with Troegs Independent Brewing, Antifragile Brewing, and Warwick Farm Brewing. We discussed how they were going to do a collaboration with Adroit Theory and then it didn’t quite work out. The nuances to collaborations are a very tricky thing.

This brings me back to how once again, just like in previous times we’ve done interviews with people, Amy, Josh and I, like to take a non-journalistic approach of ‘chatting’ and ‘hanging out’ rather than note taking, writing down, jotting every last thing said, quoting and using tape recorders and such. We much more prefer an open, relaxed, fun style of chatting and then going through our recollection to make our articles (when we do these sneak previews or sit downs with brewers and breweries, like we’ve done with Couch Brewery, Mellow Mink Brewing, Lindgren Brewing, Beerded Goat, etc.)

One of the many things we discussed over and over was Untappd. Amanda certainly has some strong opinions and thoughts on the app. We discussed the pros / cons to it – as a whole, for the industry, as well as to Sworn Brewing in particular. Jesse told us about how they reached out and approached him about making their brewery a “verified venue” because of how well Sworn Brewing was doing.

Amanda getting frustrated at the kegging cleaner at Collusion Tap Works (photo courtesy of Sworn Brewing)

Jumping back up to the discussion on collaborations, we discussed their Clayton Bigsby beer (if you know, you know), a collaboration with Collusion Tap Works. Its a black kolsch. Jesse and Amanda both discussed their love for Collusion Tap Works and for Jared, and their working agreement with them (mostly Amanda begrudgingly discussing how she has to go there to clean kegs).

Some of the most interesting parts of the discussion was listening to Jesse talk about the art and the craft of brewing beer. How much he loves their small model, getting to do so many new batches (they are already past 100 batches for the brewery, and Jesse himself is over a thousand commercially and professionally). Jesse absolutely loves his small system, his model of making beer the way he wants to, the designs and recipes that he wants to, and being able to just constantly tweak, to constantly update, to constantly fiddle with everything to the way he wants. Like an artist sculpting. Or a painter painting. And he very much views this as an art, his art. He gets to craft it, near daily, making the batches he wants, with the recipes he’s worked on and the brewing system he created.

Jesse and Amanda

There are many things to say, but looking back over our pictures, and this one grabs my thoughts on it, is that I really wanted to point out is the dedication and enjoyment, and love that these two have for what their doing. Jesse obviously loves the brewing process, brewing, crafting, honing his beers. But they both love doing this. They genuinely enjoy running the brewery, talking to guests, sitting there and hanging out with people, chatting about beer, with beer, to people. They both have an extreme passion for the business, for the quality, for the art, for the beer, for what it means to people, to the community, to what it means for everyone. These two love getting to work with and for the people of not just Mechanicsburg, but all the people who visit their brewery. Who have taken home crowlers and given them to friends or tasted them with their friends. Nearly every single person that walked into that brewery on July 18th, knew Jesse and Amanda, they shook hands, hit fists, clapped shoulders, etc. Bantered with each and every person. Watching them with the people coming into their humble brewery, you can see why they do this, why they continue to do this, and why they want to continue to do this. Plus, I think it lets them keep giving their daughter (part time bartender) enough crap every day. (What parent wouldn’t want that?)

Throughout the course of our chat, we enjoyed the full menu, while Jesse and Amanda enjoyed their lager, we joked, we chatted about the past year, how crazy it all felt just a year ago sitting down to chat about the place to be, and how its ‘grown’ in that year. Grown being a relative term really. The brewery and the building itself is the same size, but there are so many differences. The patio area outside is bigger, theres a larger area to make food, and something that Jesse wants to do much more of. Theres the sense of how its grown in popularity, in community, and in spirit. We joked about things they could do or would do or would not do with the building and the area, we joked about things from their opening like the black drop down ceiling tiles, etc.

Funnily enough there isn’t much of anything Jesse wants to change, or even grow, in the sense of ‘getting larger’ materially. He enjoys his size, his location, their heartbeat of a brewery. They enjoy just what they have, not wanting to get ‘too big’ or to ‘outgrow’ themselves. We talked about satellite and second locations, and discussed how this doomed or severely hurt many other breweries. We discussed some financials of the industry and Sworn itself, but generally this was a dog best left to sleep. I think the biggest thing we could say as a takeaway is contentment in this aspect. They are secure, happy, and content with the creation, the situation, the brewery; not content in a “resting on their laurels” kind of way, but content in what they created, a happiness brought on by all the hardwork, sweat, and straight up work in the brewery; a contentment more born on satisfaction and not wanting to destroy whats already there. Progress will be made obviously, but not for lack of reason, lack of logic, lack of strategy and idea. Progress for Sworn will be in an essence a tactical idea.

Moving back to the beer aspect of our conversation, we chatted and discussed styles. We talked about IPAs, hazy and west coast, we talked about saisons, lagers, we talked about stouts and porters. Basically we covered the spectrum of craft beer, and how Jesse loves to brew and try them all. The challenge of coming up with new recipes for different styles is always forefront, but a challenge Jesse looks forward to, a challenge he wants and in almost an aspect its something that drives his brewing edge, his creativity. He keeps him a younger man in a sense. (Which I’m sure Amanda appreciates.) But that spark of creativity and wanting to try different approaches, different styles, different recipes, is the genesis and main thrust of The Gamer series. Jesse’s version of research and development, his system to test out new recipes and methods and variants, “what if I change this hop or tweak this grain bill”, etc.

The area around the smoker and cooking area for Sworn Brewing

Amy took the above picture of the ‘food prep’ area at Sworn Brewing, the smoker and outdoor grill area. And of course had to grab a shot of the award that Jesse won. Later in the conversations, Jesse talks about how awards and things like the Untappd stuff and tournaments and medals don’t appeal to him, so of course we had to poke at him, and mention how he “prominently displays this award”. (He promptly then removed said award, in a bit of a good natured huff.) When visiting the brewery, make sure you look for this award and point it out to Jesse.

Speaking of things that annoy Jesse, we would be amiss if we didn’t mention the stickers bearing his likeness. There is a sticker of Jesse’s head. And needless to say Jesse loves that this is a thing (maximum sarcasm involved here). We have discussed using the image for panties, as well as pasties, and other sorts of merchandise and memorabilia. One can only hope one day we’ll be able to buy Jesse themed pasties and panties from Sworn Brewing. (The ball is in their court.)

Wrapping This Up

We are fast approaching the 3500 word mark, and its best we get this wrapped up. As always, we had a wonderful time visiting. And even more so, we had a fantastic time chatting with Amanda and Jesse. They are absolutely phenomenal people to get to hang out with, and pick their brains about beer, the industry, brewing, everything really. They really are wonderful people, and its a blast getting to spend time with them, and getting to be at their brewery. And they don’t make bad beer either, so thats certainly a plus.

I can’t say enough great things about them, Sworn Brewing, and am constantly recommending the brewery to people that come into my work or that I meet out. The community aspect is top notch, and the place is welcoming, the beers are good, the food is great, and the vibe is perfect.

We are so happy to see how well they are doing, and wish them a Happiest Anniversary. One down, many more to go! (Here’s to revisiting this article and writing about their 50th anniversary!)

I want to again thank Amanda and Jesse for inviting us out and having us chat with them and getting to not just write the first article but this second article as well. I want to thank Josh and Amy as well for writing and helping craft this article. We visited on July 18th, and we wrote our portions somewhat from there, some in increments, but mostly in the later more recent time, so any errors and mistakes are due to our faulty minds, especially since “we had a few that day”.

I do want to apologize for some of the tardiness of this article, it was originally intended to get prepared and finished around the 10th of August, but real life (four daughters and all) tends to get in the way, and this article is just a mere 10 days late. My apologies.

I want to give one final shout of: “WHOOOOOO DEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY” to fully wrap this up.

More Articles About Sworn Brewing Company

More Information on Sworn Brewing Company

The following comes via Untappd.

Sworn Brewing Company is a nano brewery from Mechanicsburg, PA. They have 121 unique beers, and over 9,100 ratings, with a global average rating of 4.19 (as of 8.20.24). Their Untappd description is currently blank.

You can find them at the following social media platforms:

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