Starkville is on its way to having its own brewery. SweetGum Brewing Company, started by Ed Dechert and Cameron Fogle, is a Starkville-based company that will be releasing its first craft beer later this fall.
Dechert, an instructor in the dean of engineering office at Mississippi State University, said he and his business partner, Fogle, began working on SweetGum Brewing Co. two and a half years ago. While Fogle does not have as much brewing experience, Dechert said he has been brewing craft beers for five or six years.
 Because of the high costs of starting a brewery, the company opted to contract their beer with Lazy Magnolia, Mississippi’s first package brewery located in Kiln, Mississippi.
 “Raising the capital you would need to actually start a full-scale brewery is pretty serious. We’re talking about near a million dollars. Neither one of us have any kind of rich uncle, so we’re going to have to be raising that kind of money,” Dechert said.
 SweetGum Brewing Co. started its contract with Lazy Magnolia a year ago. The bulk of the work, Dechert said, came from a licensing standpoint.
 “(It was a) very slow process of getting everything done,” he said. “We had to get licenses, labels and artwork approved.”
 The company sourced its artwork from the art and graphic design department on campus at MSU.
Sam Feraci, an alumnus of the university, designed the logo, bar tap handle, T-shirts and bar poster for the company and their first beer.
 Although the company does not expect to make a lot of profit through contracting their beer, Dechert emphasized they certainly hope to make a reputation.
 “Our ideal, since we’ve got the contract starting, we’re planning to go down [to Kiln] and brew once a month. The idea is to get it out, get it on shelves. We’re not doing it to turn a profit at this point. We’re trying to build up some kind of market. We’ll hopefully introduce a second beer in the next four to six months,” he said.
 The company’s debut brew is called Standby Red Ale, which Dechert described as a well-balanced brew.
“(It’s) fairly well-balanced, not too hoppy, it’s not sweet. It’s got a good balance to the malt profile and the hop profile,” Dechert said.
Standby Red Ale is expected to be in grocery stores, local bars and other beer retail locations in Starkville and other north Mississippi cities by Oct. 1.
 Until 2012, Mississippi beer laws prevented the craft beer movement from growing in the state. Organizations such as the Mississippi Malt Beverage Association, the trade association that represents beer distributors and Raise Your Pints, a non-profit lobbying group formed in 2007, were all central to making new legislation possible. Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law a bill that allowed the creation and sale of alcohol containing more than five percent alcohol by weight, thus ushering in the new era of craft beers.
 Without such legislation, other Mississippi breweries like Southern Prohibition in Hattiesburg, Lucky Town in Jackson  and Oxford Brewing Co. in Oxford would never have flourished.
 Dechert said he has hopes and feels that high expectations are realistic and possible for SweetGum.