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:

We've Been Busy...

Sorry we haven't updated anything in a while. Between the new job and the brewery I've been awfully busy. We have been doing a great many things, including working on our draft system and a number of test batches, we just didn't have much to post about. Should have some more updates within a short while.

In the meantime have a Happy Halloween and be safe out there.

Here is a little project Jacqui made for us.

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.

We Received Some Great News!

On my way out to meeting up with Eric to go to the OC Brew Ha Ha this past weekend I stopped by the brewery for a few minutes to take care of some things. When I checked the mail I came across a white envelope from the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.


We have ABC approval!!!


Now we just have to work out some stuff with the California State Board of Equalization and  wait for the federal government TTB approval while we add a bit more stuff to the brewery.


Hooray!!! 


*Note: the OC Brew Ha Ha was a fantastic event. For those of you from Southern California, it took place at Hidden Valley park which is part of the old Lion Country Safari grounds - a very nice venue with lots of shade trees. Also, one of my very favorite bands, Seedless played at the event so all the better. Thanks go out to the event organizers and to the OC Firefighters' volunteers. 

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.