We’d like to thank everyone that came out for our Grand Opening! We were overwhelmed (in every sense of the word) by the reception we got from the entire community. Several local breweries had representatives there, as did many of our the companies that helped bring all this to life. We were absolutely packed from our 2pm opening through about 7pm, and full until 9pm. We hope that everyone enjoyed themselves, since we obviously couldn’t chat with everyone there!

We know that the opening didn’t go without issues, and we’re really grateful for the understanding of everyone who came by. We were a little short staffed due to one member being the hospital, and we had issues with the POS system that led to delays in getting beer and bills to folks. We’ve already started putting in place some new processes and equipment to help solve those problems.
We’re so excited to finally be open! Thank you all for the warm welcome, and we look forward to hoisting another beer with you soon!

Wow, I can’t believe that I haven’t updated this blog in over a month!  I have, of course, updated Facebook, Twitter, and even Instagram fairly frequently, but I use those for more “updates” and this blog for “big events.”   And we really haven’t had any big events lately.  Yeah, our manufacturer’s rep came out to set up all of the equipment, and we got the glycol system in place, and the boiler in place, and everything tested, and just about everything finished as far as construction goes, but to me all of those were smaller milestones.  There are three big ones:

1. Get our Brewers Notice from the TTB
2. Get our Certificate of Occupancy from the City
3. Grand Opening

Why are those so important?  Without the first, we can’t make beer.  Without the second, we don’t have a place.  And without the third, we don’t have you, which makes everything else irrelevant.

But back to today…I’ve actually been on the phone at least twice a day with the TTB for the past week, trying to iron out final issues and changes.  We’d already been moved to final status once and returned to the specialist.  I thought we’d finally gotten the last hurdle cleared, and I’d been checking my phone every 10 minutes to see if we had received the email telling us that we’ve been accepted.  Finally 3pm rolled around (5pm in Cincinatti, where the TTB offices are) and so I resigned myself to yet another weekend with no good news to share.  Hoping for a little good news, though, I logged onto the TTB website to see if there were any updates, and there it was:

Instead of “Review in Process”…it said “Approved”

I did a double-take.  Does that really mean what it says?  What happened to the email that was supposed to be generated when we got accepted?

Who cares!?  Finally, after 194 days of waiting, stressing, revising, complaining and following up we finally have our golden ticket!

So now we have to finish up the space, get it cleaned up, get some beer made, and get some folks hired so that we can have our Grand Opening.  We’ll have more details next week with our plans, but we’re looking at the end of February to finally get to share a beer with all of you!

I’ve been terrible about keeping everyone up-to-date over the past two weeks…but I’m turning over a new leaf.  We’ve been absolutely frantic trying to get everything moved around, stood up, and connected.  But at this point everything is now in its place, and our manufacturer’s rep arrived today to help us get everything hooked up, tested, and ready to run!

First off, I’d like to thank everyone who helped getting the equipment and furniture unloaded and stood up.  We had to use three different forklifts (as the first two wouldn’t fit through the door) and lots of math, engineering and physics to get all of the vessels (some weighing 1600+ pounds) stood up and positioned.  We did have to widen a couple of doorways to get a few things moved around, but as of this morning the heat exchanger is on the roof, the chiller pumps and reservoir are in back area, the keg washer and filler are in place, the water filter and tankless water heaters (Rinnai) are up on the walls and ready to be fired up, the brewhouse equipment is all in place, and all of our furniture has arrived.  We also got the sound system working, the TVs and projector up, the glass washer in, and all the lighting is now done as well.

All we’re waiting on is the TTB (still).  The Colorado licensing is even complete, so as soon as we get our TTB application approved it will take 4 weeks to brew, hire staff, and clean up and we can open the doors!

Well, the unload is complete, and we sent all three containers back to the transportation company.  While it’s all in the brewery now, it’s not all stood up yet, as we need some heavier equipment to get some of these things upright.  Then we need to get all the plumbing, electrical and vent hookups done.

But at least for now the 10bbl fermenters and the 4 serving vessels are all set!

Well, Day 1 of the equipment unload is complete! OK, well it’s day 1 of the public unload–Chris and a few helpers have been unloading the smaller stuff got the past two days. But today was the big stuff, and we had a crew of help on hand! There was a lot of manual effort, engineering, physics and improvisation, but we got the mash tun and boil kettle unloaded and into the brewhouse, and 4 of the serving tanks into the tasting room.

Huge thank you’s go to Art, Patrick, Connor, Bob, Mike, Tyler, Steve, and Travis for all of their hard work today!

We’re rounding into the home stretch for construction! There are a couple of big(ger) things remaining:

• We need to seal the brewery area concrete
• The lights in the “snug” area should be in this week, as should the additional copper lights in the beerhall
• The tankless water heaters haven’t arrived yet
• The front rail on the bar is stripped, but not refinished
• …and the big one: the chiller didn’t quite fit where we had hoped, so we’re working on (hopefully) putting it out back

But other than that, we’re mostly looking at little punchlist items. They did a bunch of cleanup over the weekend and this morning to get the construction debris out, and IMHO I think it’s looking incredible! I can’t wait to be able to look out over the bar at a lot of new and old friends enjoying our beer!

Well, it’s been a very productive week. The power’s on, the electricians are finishing up their testing and fixes, and the millworkers are back in now that they can see what they’re doing! The exterior signage should go up on Monday, and our equipment should be shipping that day as well. Hopefully we’ll even get the painters back in next week! It should all be mostly done in the next two weeks, although some lights are on backorder until mid-November. And then the equipment will arrive, get installed, and we can do some final cleanup.

So I’m guessing we’ll be able to open our doors by the end of the year…the only question now is whether or not we’ll be able to make beer. Still waiting on the TTB 🙁

Well, it’s finally happened…Xcel has finally gotten the power turned on to the unit! Our electricians from Tesla Global Solutions were out at 4:30am with Xcel getting everything turned on, and are spending the day testing all of the electrical work that they’ve done over the past few weeks. They still have a little more to go, but that means that we can get the millwork guys and the painters back in to really start finishing things up in the space!

Here are a couple of early photos–I’ll have some more up in the next day or two as we get everything tested out and turned on!

Finally some really good news! Our equipment should be ready to ship from China on Monday! They just sent us some pictures of the leak tests that they ran, and they’re already crating up all of the components to put into the containers.  It should arrive around Thanksgiving, although you can bet that we’ll be keeping track of the voyage daily–there are some very cool maritime trackers on the ‘net that let you see where the ship is in near real-time!

Well, we’re making slow, but steady, progress. Unfortunately we still don’t have power, but we’re hopeful that will be resolved by the end of next week. The bathrooms are finished (aside from some small things like mirrors and a few touch-ups). The woodwork is progressing nicely, as are the other finishes and the electrical.

We got some good news in that our brewing equipment should be shipping on Oct 10. We still haven’t heard back from the TTB on our application, but we’re still hopeful that we’ll be able to iron all that stuff out before the end of the year. We’re also working on furnishings, marketing stuff (shirts, coins, etc), and our signage has been approved by the city!

Anyway, here are the current pictures!