Hey everyone, here is your standard opening paragraph where I apologize for not updating on a more regular basis. I won’t bother with an excuse or a promise to do better… I’ll just say that hey… I suck at keeping this up-to-date. The silver lining is that I suck at keeping up-to-date because we are staying busy!
Progress is a little behind schedule as we had some unexpected snags with the water main and fire suppression system, but I think we’ve got those things in order now and are charging forward. I won’t predict a finish line, but my goal is to have us brewing by the end of the month. Light a candle for our little project.
Let’s take a photo tour of what’s happening down there, shall we?
Outside, we clad the north face of the building in metal. Above is an in progress picture of the cladding. This will provide us with a little more insulation and protection from flying rocks (which has been an issue to date).
Making a lot of beer is serious business and it requires serious power. We are quadrupling the capacity of our municipal power supply, which required a new pole and box from our utilities provider. We also are working on another power project we hope we unveil soon, but it isn’t final so stay tuned for that.
Moving inside, local artist Bruce Pena is nearing completion on one of three murals inside the tasting room. We’ll keep the other two secret until the official opening of the tap room, but here is a sneak peek. The entry way back into the brewery you see here will eventually be glass doors leading back into the brewery.
We got our finished product cooler erected a few weeks ago, in all it’s majestic glory. It may not look too big in this photo, but that’s because this 12,000 Cubic Foot cold room is sitting inside of a 660,000 Cubic Foot building. After packaging, all it’s beer will go to this cold box waiting for our distributor to pick it up and deliver it to your local bar/restaurant/grocery store/sports venue/etc
We also got all our ferementers & bright tanks stood up a few weeks ago. Here is an action shot of the rigging crew sitting up our 16’10” tall 60 bbl fermenter. No need to be nervous.
Here’s a shot of all the tanks after setting them in place.
A favorite shot of mine that I took from up on the lift looking back at Jason, showing the scale of the tanks.
Meanwhile in Canada, our equipment manufacturer has been sending us pics of the brewhouse as it is being finished up. It will be shipped to us next week where we’ll start installation and hopefully brewing shortly after.
Another brewhouse shot, though there is a vessel missing from this one.
Brewhouse shot showing piping detail from the platform
Brewhouse shot showing knockout heat exchanger and hopback
A final brewhouse shot.
That’s it for now! Follow progress of the new brewery at @Freetail2 on twitter or as always you can get me @beermonkey.
I do want to mention, this blog is inundated with spam so I’m unlikely to see any comments here.
Cheers,
Scott