"Grand" Opening - Pandemic Style

As we complete some of the remaining essentials for a soft(ish) opening, we look back at this crazy six month journey. While we knew it would take a great deal of effort to convert a "slightly" delapated bagel shop into a brewery, it is always easy to be naive when it comes to the true amount of work it takes to start a business. It reminds us of the early times when Wally's Place was being incubated in the very same spot. It is always the same, you jump in with gusto and unsurmountable excitement and instantly begin learning all the lessons, the hard way. But, that's what makes creating something such a fulfulling experience. Its got ups and and it certainly has its downs. We've just completed the second iteration of the "Turtle Bay IPA" and feel that it meets the calibur of the beer we intend to sell. We had previously brewed the 3rd iterstion of the "Black Marble Stout" and the first "Hill's Sail Pale Ale," both of which were sitting idle in our serving tanks awaiting opening day. We will open with these three beers, strictly for bottle fills as the COVID rules indicate bars and tasting rooms should be closed. We feel that this is a simple way to open slowly, continue to work on our craft but still introduce a few people to our beer. We continue to move forward on the "big" project, a 50 seat brewpub located just east of Wally's Place and the South Hero Community Library. We have had positive meetings in the last few weeks with a couple banks and have ordered and completed a favorable appraisal. We feel very good about a potential breakground in the spring of this year. If the build goes to plan, we might be done construction very early in 2022. At that point we would transition out of the 1 Ferry Rd. Location to the Route 2 location. This is a very exciting prospect, as we could ramp up and be ready for summer of 2020. Ideally, we'd be out of the COVID environment, and back to some sort of normalcy, like eating and drinking with people, in public. Can you even imagine?! Today we open for business. We continue to be excited for the beer, for the community, and for the support. Thank you and cheers!
Finally completed all the leak checking of the glycol system, now we insulate...
The insulation hides all the pex bends and makes it feel like a real brewery
Connecting drops to the tanks and installing solenoids and temp controllers...
With the glycol system running, we can now use the walk in cooler!
Filling kegs of IPA
Tanks finally start to take their place

Old Wally's becomes New Two Heroes. What. A. Journey.

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