Two Heroes Public House

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 wh...

 Nothing worth doing is easy.   We have been plugging away at the many aspects of this project with the anticipation they will all come together at the right time.  And, we still believe they will! We are a mere day or two away from filling the glycol system and starting up the chiller.  This has been a labor intensive project with much head scratching and learning on the fly.  Once completed, we can start up the cold room for keg storage, start to crash and condition beers in the tanks and begin to lager beer.  With the electrical connections finalized to the fan coil, pump and chiller, all that is left to do is leak check the system (which is a pain in the butt) and clean and fill the lines. We have brewed our third iteration of the stout, which we believe is the winning one.  We also have a pale ale nearly completed its fermentation and just about ready to keg.  Later this week, we will brew IPA #2.  That means as early as the end of next ...

 The last couple weeks were filled with many firsts.  Coupled with the holidays, it was hard to be 100% focused on moving the brewery toward opening.  We did, however, get our POS training completed, as well as, set up the tablet and hardware.  We are using software called Arryved.  This is a pretty hearty platform designed for restaurants and breweries.  We think it will fit nicely with the future brewpub, but in the mean time, it will certainly handle our small operation at the corner of Ferry Rd, and Route 2.  We are excited for the app, and since it was created by many folks who worked and played in the brewing industry, we feel confident it will meet our needs. We also took our first trailer load of liquid brewery waste to the farm.  SO EXCITING!  It was a rather eventful afternoon.  We borrowed my brother's truck, picked up the trailer (a tanker trailer we had acquired in Plattsburgh many months prior), and tested out our new pump....

 We've been plugging away at the brewery, trying to get all the components in order.  There is still plenty left to do, but we are trying to prioritize what we really need accomplished to get open and serve some beer.   We've spent the better part of two weeks setting up payroll, finalizing tax accounts and getting familiar with our point of sale.  We are using Arryved, which is a very robust POS that will be almost too powerful for our little tasting room. However, when the move comes in the early parts of 2022 to the brew pub, it will be perfectly aligned with our mission in the new space.  It has the capacity to track back of house for both brewery and restaurant, seamlessly integrating with a user friendly front of house.  It's an android based program, but fairly simple to used.  We will report back on this more as we open our doors and learn more about its functionality.   In the meantime, Daren took a trip and picked up a nice Stout 2BBL fe...

 One very important next step is connecting all of our tanks to the glycol system.  This will provide chilled water for the fan coil in the walk in cooler, and chilled water for controlling the temperature of fermenting beer as well as providing cooling for serving and conditioning tanks. The glycol system starts with the chiller, located outside, then heads inside to a reservoir and pump.  The glycol is then pumped around to each tank, starting with a fan coil in the walk in cooler.  From each supplied tank, there is also a return that needs to be plumbed back to the chiller outside.  It is called a reverse return, where the first tank supplied becomes the last tank to send glycol back to the chiller.  This process took a little head scratching, but once we wrapped our head around the layout and pipe material and sizing, we think we are well on our way having an economical cooling system! To finalize the glycol system, we'll need to acquire solenoids for e...

 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 have made good headway with our plans for glycol, CO2 and power for all the necessary applications.  After the walk in cooler was assembled, we can now mount the glycol reservoir and pump and install the lines that will take chilled water to all the tanks.  This is a tedious planning process and ordering the fittings can be overwhelming.  We think we have a good plan, especially for such a temporary location.  Parts have been ordered and installation awaits! We received our brewery pump, so now things feel exceptionally real!  This is one mega pump and with wheels, we can drag it around to perform any number of tasks.  Today we used it to pump water into the storage tank...ah....so very interesting! Daren has been spending lots of time tuning up the kegerator, which we just began using.  We brewed a stout a couple weeks ago, which made its way into kegs.  This beer was a "dry" stout fermented with an English yeast that worked really quick...