Another 1 bbl brewer

Thanks, a couple blurry pics from the build. Digging a trench tonight.

The trench has been dug. It runs all the way from the cold room on the other side of the wall to the floor drains in the foreground. 3 truckloads of concrete rocks, moved by hand. A 1 foot wide trench doesn't sound like much, but when you multiply that by 4 inches deep and over 40 feet long, it's a lot of rock. That will be the last of the back breaking work, we need to dig the dirt and lay our piping at the correct grade, but that's nothing compared to lugging all that concrete debris. With the grade, we're going to have to go down at least 16 inches at the end of the run, so we have to install a sump at the end to pump it up to the main sewage line. More digging.

I'm jealous. We haven't been able to change an effin toilet seat ourselves (slight exaggeration). We have to have licensed pro's pull permits for EVERYTHING we've had to do to our space. It's been a total nightmare. I wish we could some of this stuff ourselves as it would have been done a couple months ago and a few thousand dollars cheaper.

I hear you, luckily my brewing partner is an electrical contractor and has contacts in the trades, so pulling permits so far hasn’t been too much of an issue. A lot of the people we’re having pull permits are just letting us do the work, they’ll take a look at it and let us know if we did anything egregiously wrong, then we can get the inspection. Our landlord is really the hero here though, he’s given us carte blanche to do whatever we want with the space, and he’s a fabricator so he’s giving us a hand welding our tanks and setting up a tippy dump system.

I know a lot of people fret about the state and federal laws when setting up a brewery but really the most important thing is the town you’re in and the building itself. Before you fill out even one TTB form you’ve got to be in with the local zoning commission, building officials, and your landlord (if you have one). If you don’t have that, you don’t even get off the ground.

That's exactly been our experience... BY FAR and away our biggest hurdle has been the small town Building and Plumbing inspectors and a code that seems to be made up on the fly. We look at other nanos around the state and they are able to use all sorts of equip that wouldn't remotely fly in our little tiny town. It's maddening.

We've had our TTB and state ABCC licenses for two months. We already have accounts. And we're not open yet because we're still dealing with nightmare town issues.

And just to head off the question, yes we did have a few beers before we cut the floor :cross:

ausdb said:

Excuse the poor dumb aussie in the corner but how many US gallons or litres is a BBL?

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As someone pointed out below your question, it is 31 gallons!

That would also be 2 of these kegs (15.5 gallons) which are the 1/2 BBL size:

That question was asked almost three years ago, thanks for the quick response

good luck guys
Its nice to see more nano's in the works

Cape Brewing said:

That's exactly been our experience... BY FAR and away our biggest hurdle has been the small town Building and Plumbing inspectors and a code that seems to be made up on the fly. We look at other nanos around the state and they are able to use all sorts of equip that wouldn't remotely fly in our little tiny town. It's maddening.

We've had our TTB and state ABCC licenses for two months. We already have accounts. And we're not open yet because we're still dealing with nightmare town issues.

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Gotta love Norton! Wasn't much fun to go to school in that tiny town! Wish you guys were around, oh, 10 years ago or so.

MikeRLynch said:

And just to head off the question, yes we did have a few beers before we cut the floor :cross:

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For future cuts... when cutting concrete use a chalk string and then spray a clear coat to seal it or the water washes it away before you cut....

Monster Mash said:

For future cuts... when cutting concrete use a chalk string and then spray a clear coat to seal it or the water washes it away before you cut....

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Lol, now you tell me

Some more pics of the build. We've got a lot of the major stuff roughed in, our carpenter has been amazing. Still waiting on TTB, submitted at the end of September and it's been assigned to an agent as of the end of October, but nothing since then. I think I'll be making some phone calls. Here are some pics of the progress.


The outside of the unit, we're within a larger warehouse space.


The brewing area before the walls, floor drains already in place.


The fermentation/cooler room. We split this in half, the far side we put in r21 insulation for the cooler.


Entrance to the fermentation room.


Better pic of the floor drains

The whole unit, we took down those awful lights


The unit has two garage doors, we'll keep one for deliveries but the other we'll wall off and put in a fire exit.


Drain piping laid in


Framing the brewery


Almost finished, the large windows were found in a pile in the back of the property. The warehouse used to be an 1800's mill, and these were the original windows, the glass is that cool wavy old type. My brewing partner re-glazed each pane himself.

A nice ledge to put your beer down, this will run almost the whole perimeter of the space


Upgrading the power, our brewery will be entirely electric


Starting to wall up the second garage door


The fermentation room, now with a wall dividing it from the cooler space




Little hallway around back of the brewhouse to the bathroom


The unit has 18 foot ceilings, and the space above the fermentation room and cooler was just dead space, so we walled it off and insulated it.


Garage door sealed off


Lights! These are just roughed in, the nice fixtures will be put in place after we paint everything above the white line black

Any Updates?

Yes I agree.... whats up did you get your TTB permit?

bendavanza said:

i would think that a full sized false bottom would be fine in the bk if you're using mostly leaf hops, they will act as a filter bed.

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