After scouring the commercial real estate in Murrieta I've come to decide that finding a building with natural gas in the unit is going to be a few-and-far-between scenario. Not that I am saying its impossible, but its improbable. A simple solution is to open in Temecula instead--they seem to have natural gas stubbed to every building (cited using no particular source). But, Murrieta is my hometown, I love it here, and natural gas or not, this is where I plan to set up shop.
In brewing, you have a few options for heating your brewing liquors. You can heat through jacketed tanks or calandria using steam, which is heated through a steam boiler, which is usually heated with natural gas. You can heat with direct fire, which is fueled from either propane or natural gas. Or, you can use heating elements inside the kettle powered via good ol' electricity.
After a little research, I found that brewing with electric, while expensive when compared to natural gas, is also very efficient. Every bit of every thermal unit is being used to heat the brewing water or wort; and, with solar panels, this type of heat can be made affordable and can be easily renewed. Additionally, while brewing in summer, the heat is directly immersed in the brewing liquors, rather than heating up the room. When I was working at the brewery last winter, I would warm up the warehouse by boiling some water. The inefficient heat of a direct fired kettle was more than enough to bring a 45F warehouse up to a comfortable 75F in an hour!
Another plus is I can put an electrically heated brewery anywhere I choose. With this information in hand it looks like I'm going back to the drawing board on some of the buildings I originally crossed of my list.
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