We’ve added another co-worker at the brewery since my last update. Introducing Casey Hughes, our brewmaster.
Casey comes to us from Philadelphia where he was head brewer and director of production at Flying Fish in New Jersey. After over 10 years at Flying Fish he wanted to return to Florida where he had started his brewing career, and be a part of the craft beer revolution going on down here. You can read a more detailed bio here. With his level of skill, experience, and passion for craft beer, I can’t imagine anyone better to lead production at this brewery. We can’t wait to drink his beer.
So what else have we been up to the past couple weeks? First of all, beer development is in full swing on our little 20 gallon homebrew system. There’s lots of beer bubbling away in our fermentation fridges. We hope to get some beer out there for people to taste, soon.
And, then there’s lots of tasting of previous batches to be done. I never knew tasting beer could be such hard work, but these guys take the job pretty seriously.
Also, we’ve been trying to get out and talk to some other local breweries. There’s an amazing spirit of comaraderie in Tampa’s craft beer community. We honestly want to see each other succeed and take more market share from the giant industrial breweries. Working together, I think we’ll do some amazing things in this town.
After meeting Khris at Green Bench in St. Pete, Casey was invited to help with the install of their beautiful new brewhouse. Installation went well and we hear they should have some beer for us all to drink in September.
Speaking of equipment, ours is still on order and getting closer to being ready. Our friends Jan and Uwe from Rolec flew out to meet with us recently and go over the drawing and designs of all the equipment. They’re still on track to ship equipment to us in November. Which means we have to get floor drains in and make a few other modifications to the building before then. There’s still time to get it all done, but the clock is ticking.
Building renovations are moving forward a bit more as guys have started showing up and putting up framing for new walls. Meanwhile we’re busy getting bids and trying to get permits on the other work.
That’s it for now. Thanks for checking in on us and we’ll post again soon.
-Kent