Adding to our Tank collection

 We have been fortunate enough to pick up a few used fermenters locally from our friends at Green Empire Brewing.  They have been expanding to a full 10 bbl system so we we able to acquire the two 7bbls last year and then two 5bbls this year.  At the end of the week last week we grabbed the two 5bbls and brought them back to the pilot space.  They tucked in nicely next to the one 7bbl we will use.  

We are exploring picking up a another 2bbl for the "front of house" and that should complete our needs for tanks.  It's a variety of tanks, all located in interesting spots, but we believe this temporary set up will allow us to be both productive and flexible with the seasonality of the islands.  We will make the best of what we have!

In the meantime, we have made two beers thus far.  The first, a dry stout, turned out pretty tasty and landed at 5.5%.  The other, an "ale" fermented with both recycled English yeast from the stout and a saison yeast we had hanging around.  Both were the subject of testing with our new refractometer.  The saison/ale was dry hopped Friday and will be racked this week to a big conditioning tank until kegs are ready.  

Daren has opted to build a somewhat semi-automatic keg washing machine.  Since we haven't spent a great deal of time getting that off the ground, we are using the pilot system to was kegs in the meantime.  This works well enough to get the used kegs we picked up last year cleaned out and ready for rotation.  

Many projects lay ahead still, including glycol system plumbing, CO2 and the Keg Washer.  But as of last week we received a state license to manufacture beer.  We still need to get our logo work complete and make sure we are set up with the appropriate tax entities, but things are looking up!  

We plan on a very soft opening sometime in December, as we continue to work out kinks and get our projects done.  We are very fortunate to be able to work on this project and build a brand that will be sustainable moving forward.

Utilizing the warm weather to clean some vessels for winter storage

Strapping down one of the 5bbls we picked up last Friday.

Lot's of straps!  These 5 bbls are named Cara and Shorty

Exterior prewash before they move in

The back room is filling out nicely

A view looking back

Temporary Keg washer set up!


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