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We first met Antonio Maradiaga right about this time in 2014.
His Kickstarter for Twinpanzee Brewing Company had just launched, and he was enthusiastic about building a brewery right where he started enjoying craft beer, near GMU’s campus. The lifelong Fairfax resident, 39, who still works full time in IT, is dad to twin boys he nicknamed “the monkeys,” which was the inspiration for the smashed words of twin and chimpanzee for Twinpanzee. (One of his boys actually came up with it.)
Things were exciting. “It’s just one of those dreams I’ve always had,” Maradiaga, then a homebrewer, said about building a brewery.
But the funding didn’t come through. Maradiaga abandoned Kickstarter for Indiegogo because of its pay structure; Indiegogo allows a campaign to keep the money raised even if it doesn’t meet the initial goal. From the $25,000 he hoped for through Kickstarter, Maradiaga cleared $4,000 from Indiegogo. In 2015, we reported he was going to put in $200,000 of his own money to keep Twinpanzee going.
After a long search and continued zoning issues within Fairfax County, Maradiaga was recruited by Loudoun County to open within their brewery-friendly borders.
And now, a little over three years after Maradiaga and his wife, Maha Majdoub, put their dream out there, Twinpanzee will throw an opening party on Aug. 12 at the Sterling nanobrewery.
