The brew house, two months ago.
Two months ago I wrote, “Tomorrow the trucks will begin lining up. Tomorrow there will be ropes and pulleys, chains and hoists. Tomorrow there will be spitting and cursing, sweating and shouting. Tomorrow we build a brewery.”
There were only two days worth of shouting, spitting, and cursing (mostly by Casey) and then, miraculously, all the equipment was safely tucked safely away in the brewery. The successful load-in was due in large part to Derek, JT, Terry, and Randy from Superior Rigging. (Thanks, guys!) They brought in the heavy equipment and maneuvered our tanks delicately into place. No one got hurt, and nothing was damaged. I’d call that a success.
The brew house today!
Next a team of welders trained by the manufacturer descended upon the brewhouse. They spent over a month diligently connecting piping. (I was amazed by the amount of pipe that needs to be run.)
Then, specialized workers arrived to setup the grist mill. They’re also working on getting glycol (cooling system) to the fermenters, connecting the boiler to the brewhouse, connecting air lines to the pneumatic valves, and getting all the electric stuff wired up.
We have water flowing to the brewhouse, and we expect to have electricity, gas, and sewage hookups completed any day, now.
Miles and miles of piping.
The bottling line arrived.
By the end of the month we hope to have the new brewery totally installed and ready for testing. In early May we’ll test the system and do some brews with water and cleaners. Also in May we hope to do some test brews with actual beer to see how the recipes are scaling up to the big system.
Which leads me to the most asked question right now: When do we open?
We expect to open our temporary tasting room and start shipping draft beer to local bars in June / July. We plan to have bottled beer on shelves and open our real tasting room in September / October.
Our newest team member, Teri, serving beer at an event.
Until then, we hope you’ll come see us at an event or at the next free pop-up tasting. (I’m not allowed to give any more details on the next pop-up tasting yet, but watch our social media for an announcement.) In the meantime we’ll be pouring at Creative Loafing’s Spring Hops. Use the code BREWCODE to get $5 off admission here: http://cltampa.xorbia.com/springhops
Cheers, and thanks for checking in on us!
-Kent