Now that we have our permit in hand we’re scrambling to get our building ready before our brewing equipment shows up in mid-January. (See above for photo of our almost ready to ship brewhouse.) Currently, our brewing area is a concrete slab in desperate need of walls, roof, drains, and utilities. There’s lots of work to do, but over the past week or so we’ve seen some progress and maybe even a setback.
Our new steel building arrives.
Our first good omen was when trucks loaded with metal beams, walls and roof started lining up outside our building. Our friends at Buck Steel hit their delivery estimate for our new steel building on the nose, helping to keep us on schedule. But won’t it take months or years to build a new building? That’s what I thought. But it turns out these new steel buildings go up super fast. Buck Steel was recently clocked putting one up in only 3 days! Here’s a video showing how they do it.
Trench drain, coming soon!
Also, the trench drains that will run under the brewhouse have been cut. And Salt Construction has started working on the new concrete footers for the steel building. Here’s where the setback comes in.
Water oozing from beneath our existing slab.
As they were digging footers for the new steel building we noticed lots of water flooding one of the holes. We have no idea where all this water is coming from but it greatly complicates the pouring and hardening of concrete. We may have disturbed a pocket of groundwater or an old pipe somehow. Either that or the excessive levels of dry hopping at our pilot brewery over-saturated the air with potentially destabilizing levels of free-hop oils, tearing a rift in the time-space continuum and opening a portal to the underwater city of Atlantis. Either way, we hope to get the water issue resolved this week and start getting that building up next week.
In the meantime we’re still test brewing and honing our opening beer lineup. Thanks for all the suggestions for IPA and Wheat names on social media recently. We’d tell you which names we chose, but we’re waiting for trademark approval. We expect to announce a pop-up tasting overFacebook and Twitter @coppertail soon, so we can share our hard work and get your opinions.
Also, we added some new T-Shirts to our store recently. (Perfect for the craft beer lover on your list.) We’re still targeting late March for our opening. We’ll see you there, if we don’t see you at a pop-up tasting beforehand.
Pacifying the Atlanteans with beer.
Thanks for checking in on us! Wish us luck with the ground water situation.
– Kent