Presents For Us? Woo Hoo!

Well we got lots of new additions to the brewery today. Our fermenters came in.

While I waited at the brewery for that delivery, Eric went and picked up our kegs!

Tasting Room Finished!?

Well for now anyways. We are still waiting on our final approvals but unlike the previous pictures, the taps are now actually pouring, the drainage is complete and the blackboards are up. I am sure we will need a bit of additional decoration and such but here is the finished product.

Faucets

We finally got all of the faucets and drip trays in place. We had initially planned on a single bank of 20 but settled with 3 banks of 6 for a total of 18. It may seem like a lot but it has always been difficult keeping only 10 around. We like to keep a significant number of styles at any given time. It may take a while to get them all occupied initially but after a bit of time should be fairly manageable. Here are the pics:

Cold Room Is Up

After waiting for the heat to die down a bit, we finally got the cold room together.

 

Since it was used, it had developed quite a bit of rust on the outside of the floor panels. We used a rust converting primer and painted it black on the bottom.

 Here it is with the "office" in place.

We still have to get the electrical and cooling for the cold room and fermenting room together but we should have plenty of room for beer soon.

TTB Interview

So we had our TTB phone interview this morning. A few minor corrections but nothing significant. The usual questions of course:


New brewery or existing;   business experience;   building construction and security;   building owner and local governments aware;   excise taxes;   etc....


The only other thing pending is ABC and TTB approval.




On another note, yesterday we purchased our walk-in cooler: We will pick it up and install it next Monday. Here are the pics of it (not our site).

It is a small cooler, only 10' x 6'. A perfect size for us and will allow for ~9' of taps behind the bar.

Fermenting Chamber

Since we are brewing small batches, we have decided to use food grade plastic conical fermenters. Instead of controlling the temperature of each individually, we will be placing them in a climate controlled room for fermenting. This will room will be for primary and secondary fermentation as well as naturally conditioning and carbonating beer. Its previous life was spent as a floral cooler. FYI it is approximately 14'L x 5'D x 8'H. The HVAC is not installed and the doors are not on yet but here ya go.

Before the header and ceiling panels:

Note my "office" to the right:

After all the panels, but still no doors:

We will be blacking out the glass to prevent light through since the plastic conicals are translucent.

I almost neglected to mention: Eric and John and I went down to Murrietta on July 21 to pick this up - what a nightmare. We were told to bring a 4' x 8' trailer which it did not fit on so we had all these panels and the cooler hanging off and strapped to a little trailer towed behind a Honda Pilot with the large glass doors and the compressor crammed in the back with John while Eric was driving 55 in the slow lane of the 15 fwy... 

It was all rather scary-funny if you know what I mean.

Ginormeous Sink

So we went shopping for a sink the other day for the brewery. The normal 3 station sinks used by food service was what we were looking for, but truth be told they are a bit smaller than we needed. We came across this beast and knew it was made just for us. It is still not plumbed yet but already makes life easier.

This doesn't really give you an idea of the size so I took the following picture with Jacqui for reference.

Resembling A Brewery...

Well, it is starting to resemble a real production brewery (to me anyways). While it is still technically home brew, we brewed our first batch of beer onsite today: A 2/3 barrel batch of Session IPA. For a while now, I have been working on the serving counter and bar so we got them in place today.

I almost forgot to mention, thanks go out to Jacqui, Jon, and Kylie for their help staining those tops and painting that cabinet. We had a family day Thursday working at the Brewery.

Lots of storage in that counter which is good as we need it.

Eric came back from the great white north today (no, not Canadia). It appears that he just spent the last two weeks in a drunken stupor since all he did was visit breweries. The evidence is in the pint glasses he brought back for me. This does not include the significant number he got for himself. By the way thank you very much Eric, it is very appreciated.

Got Wood?

Well WE do... and lot's of it. I've been working on the serving bar for for a bit over a week now. It's not quite done, but it's come far enough to show some pics. Although I haven't been posting for a little while we have been busy with that and other stuff, I just haven't had anything that was really worth writing about yet. Here's the pics:

The pictures are a bit deceptive, it is not as small as it looks. To get an idea of the scale, the top is 11' x 2' and 42" from the floor. The smaller side bar is 62" x 18".

It still needs to be stained and sealed, and the cabinet needs a surface finish as well.

Tasting Room Progress

Many thanks to our good friend Manuel, our flooring is complete. He got it done in less than half the time I could have and still did a better job. Thank you so much, we really appreciate all your hard work. Here are some pics.

You may have noticed, the wall is also completely gone. Now it is just time to add a bar and a bit of furnishings. With some help, we also moved the rest of the equipment over on Saturday. We now have beer and the equipment to brew it! Thanks guys!

More Deconstruction and Our First Swag

So today I finished removing the carpet and began demolition of the wall. I think this room is going to be just about the right size for a serving bar and a few chairs as well. Here are a few pictures. I would have cleaned up the mess but I don't have a trash can yet (you can blame Eric - I do).

On another note, the other day I ordered some t-shirts and stickers with our logo.  Today, we received some decals for our junk.

Deconstruction Begins

Nothing too significant so far, just tearing out carpet and removing a door and wall. We are doing this to combine the two small offices into one larger room which will be the tasting room. For reference, the offices are approximately 10' x 10' so we will have about 200 sq. ft. of tasting room when complete. Here are what the tiny cubicals looked like. 

Removing the carpet was easy. Until I found out that below the carpet was... more carpet? Yep, it appears that if your carpet gets horribly dirty and you don't want to clean and/or vacuum it, you can just put another carpet over the top of it. The first layer came up great but the second layer is glued to the concrete and miscellaneous linoleum remnants.

The door and frame were a breeze as well.