Financial Hold Up and an Interim Project

 In the beginning of 2020, we were making great headway and finally received all the permits required to green light our project.  With the onset of COVID-19, we slowed on our progress obtaining financing to build the structure and subsequently outfit it with the equipment required to do business.  Our long time lender moved to another bank which does not intend to loan to new breweries and restaurants.  This led us to preparing lots of financial paperwork for submission to new banks.  We have had two banks show significant interest as of the end of September, so we are feeling optimistic for a Early Spring Ground breaking in 2021. 

In the meantime....

We began talking in May about renting the old Wally's bagel shop on Ferry Road.  This location, now owned by a new landlord, lends itself to a great opportunity to build and nano brewery and tasting room.  This will serve as an incubation space for our business, where we can get all licenses in place, begin selling product and building excitement for our final home.  The space has many of the amenities required for a brewery and is set up such, that we can provide an exciting brewery experience for the customer.

We signed a lease that began August 1st and have been working diligently bringing the space up to speed. We also purchased a 1.5 BBL Pilot system that we will use to brew all of our beers for the pilot space, and then when we move to the Brew Pub, we will continue to use the system to supplement our production and research.  We also have acquired quite a few brewing vessels and restaurant equipment in the time we have started this project.  Some of these pieces will be used in the incubator space in our production.

So, here we go!  See the attached pictures for some of our fit up.

Our old pilot system finds a temporary home while we survey the renovations 

The back window is taken out and prepared for a garage door!

The existing counters from Wally's are continued and expanded!

The background for our new 1.5BBL, complete with existing vapor hood

We had to remove some of the drop ceiling to fit some of our serving tanks, we made it look pretty

The back room starts to take shape, with garage door, removal of the exterior man door, and final locations of water storage tank and waste tank. 

A view from the tasting area

Our first fermentor makes its way in!  A small 2BBL to use for our test batches.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holy Moly, the new Tasting Room is open!

Image
Wowsers.  What a whirlwind.  What the heck just happened? It seems all to familiar to wait and wait and wait and then bam! things get serious.  Thank you all for bearing with us as we struggled through a very strange construction environment, dealing with items not available, crazy cost increases, contractors who were torn between numerous jobs, etc, etc, etc.... But here we are.  OPEN for business in our new tasting room and SOON to be BREWERY.  That's right, at this current time we are still brewing ALL the beer in the little space at 1 Ferry Rd.  But we have food, we have beer (and other beverages), music and so much more.  Thank you all for your patience over the last few months as we worked hard to get this space open. And what an outpouring it has been.  We are so humbled by the constant, consistent, dedicated and amazing support we have received since our soft opening in early July.  It has been awesome to see so many familiar faces po...
Read more

So Close We Can Almost Taste It...

Image
 Forgive us, for it has been far too long since we have blogged. Since our last update, we've crossed out one important item that will get us across the finish line...the electrical panel.  The electricians are sweating just a little bit less now that the panel is in, we are energized and the lights are on.  It only took roughly 15 months from date of order to delivery of the panel.  Oh, the times we live in. Now that we've crossed that hurdle, we can get going on all the finishing touches.  We've had a lot happen since our last post.  We've received partial install of our secondary steel package (which is the railings for the mezzanine, railings for the equipment platform, and the stairs to the mezzanine), received some more vessels (in the snow and ice) had the HVAC system partially installed, installed the wooden angle bracing for the steel post and beam, installed cabinets, moved equipment from various parts of South Hero to the site, received a forklif...
Read more

Really?! You are still building a Brewery?!

Image
 Forgive us blog-people, it has been far too long since our last blog. Since our last check in, we've poured a bar, put paint on the walls, coated (some of) the floors, and continued to work on various parts of the construction.   Like any other commercial build, the never ending list of small projects continues to be, well, never-ending.  And like any other commercial project, the budget get's bulged, prices climb and the owner-operators end up trying to pitch in wherever they can.   This construction has been especially taxing, as we are in a wild economic climate where prices continue to escalate, work continues to drag on, contractor availability varies, and we still can't get some essential components.  Yeah, like an electrical panel.  That's right, although the panel was ordered 11 months ago, we still don't know when we will receive our 600amp master panel.  Wild, we know.  Running off temporary power has reached its limits, and we have bee...
Read more