Muddy Creek Brewing Co. Brewery Build- Start to Finish Thread

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You're right Bronco, except that when I'm transferring to the BK, I only ultimately need about a 35 or 40 degree rise and I've got elements and gas-fired heat helping me as well.

The water coming from the tankless into the HLT can come in under the strike temperature (around 160 to 166 depending on amount of grain and mash volume and grain temp, and heat up from there.) I also have elements and direct fire under the HLT to help heat that liquor up as necessary.) Coming IN to the HLT I can afford to take more time filling, I can use up my regular hot-water tank for the first unit and I can 're-use' hot water through the tankless to help things along.

Once I have my mash finished, I heat it up to mash-out by heating the HLT with the elements, tankless and direct-fire so I can heat the mash to the appropriate mash-out temp. Then I transfer the wort to the BK. As soon as the wort hits the BK I turn on the direct-fire and maintain the temp on the wort. As soon as it covers the lower elements I fire them up as well. I begin my sparge with the already heated liquor from my HLT and when I'm done with that I transfer that over as well to my BK. From there, I have all my elements and my direct fire going to heat my BK wort up. I also switch my transfer hose over to my tankless to the BK wort can go through the tankless and up the temp from 160 or 166 to say 190 or the max of 195. I set the flow volume on the tankless down a bit so the wort can heat better and turn on the pump to let the wort flow through the tankless. That allows me to heat wort through the elements, the direct fire and the tankless all at the same time. Now I'm only heating the wort about 35 or 40 degrees which reduces my BTU requirements significantly.

This brings the wort coming out of the tankless up to 190 or 195, which lowers my delta to boil down to around 10 or 15 degrees. (Boiling temp at our altitude is about 204.) When running properly we should be able to pump about 10 or so gpm at that temperature so it should take about 30 minutes. All that time our elements and direct fire are also heating the wort so we should be pretty close by then to boil.

That's the plan anyway. We'll continue to work with it and see how it goes. On the positive end the Clementine I brewed on Saturday came out right on the numbers so that's nice.
 
Spartan1979, I think most manufactures want multi-units to be plumed in parallel. The idea would be to reduce the flow rate going thru each heater so there is more time for the heater to heat the water. The units are designed to be most efficient to heat cold water to hot water. Pluming units series the second heater in the line would be taking hot/warm water and try to heat it more. I think the efficiency would be better with them in parallel at 1/2 flow rate. Just a note, I am not in the water heater business so everything I just said might not be worth much.

MuddyCreek, I got it. I thought you were heating the HLT water up to temp when filling.

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I was going to ask if the 'art' and 'creation' part of brewing (which is the exciting part for me) gets lost in the babying of all the machines? Maybe not yet because it is so new?
 
I do a lot of smoking of meats. When I tweak ( 'art' and 'creation') a recipe I need the temperature of the smoker to be accurate and stable. When I measure my spices I need the scale to be accurate. Without repeatability of the whole system the small changes made in the spices are lost in the variability of the total system. In commercial brewing I would think being able to consistently repeat temperatures, flows, weights etc. is a must before any "'art' and 'creation'" can take place. When brewing 5 gallons, if the temps were off, and the beer isn't so great I drink it and make another batch. What a disaster if I made 50bbls of sub-par beer. The system muddycreek is installing is there system, not some off-the-shelf system any one can buy and some problems are to be expected. I think it is great they are doing it THERE way to make the beer they created using a smaller system. Early on in the thread I estimated the amount of power to supply all the heaters they had designed into the system, LOTS. Interesting to watch how this shortage of power is being over come. Can we not have "shiny machines" and "'art' and 'creation'" both?


MuddyCreek: A small brewery here in San Diego, Pacific, does use a very large instantaneous water heater for there HLT.
 
Bronco, we have had some problems and we continually have to work at it to overcome. That's where our PhD has come in handy. Todd has really been a help to us in process management.

Yesterday our CO2 tank was installed. 750 gallons of liquid CO2 at our fingertips ready to be distributed to our kegs and our taplines as necessary. We have our first two festivals over the next two weekends. Very exciting for us. It will be our first real introduction to the world.

We also hope to finish up our control panel and fire up the "real" system by the end of the month. With any luck at all we will be brewing some beer in volume and opening sometime at the end of October. This weekend I'm doing some double-duty brewing a GF lager and installing the heating elements and thermo-probes in the HLT and BK. I need to get some serious bushings though to get my elements to fit. That's going to be a challenge.

But hey, what do we live for?

We have 10 kegs full and aging for our festivals, another 4 kegs worth fermenting as I type. The pilot system is brewing beer at a furious rate. (Based on the breweries around us, we expect to go through 10 bbls a week in the taproom and through local distribution. So 10 kegs is just a tad short of what we need. ;-)
 
More of the business management side...

Remember early in the thread where somebody mentioned that we should plan for double the money and double the time?

We are just now requesting a second loan which is not quite as much as the first but darn near, (IE double the money.) And we'd hoped to be open months ago, but due to numerous delays we are now just hoping to open by the end of October and even that's going to be a real chore, so we're awful close to double the time.

So that's not just whistlin' dixie for you guys who want to open your own brewery some day. Those are real words of advice. Take it for what it's worth. We've done everything as inexpensively as possible, including that amazingly low lease and we've still had to take a second loan. And of course things always take much longer than you'd like, especially if you're doing things as a "second job".

We'll be at least $300k or more into this thing by the time we start. And we didn't get the uber-pricey brite tanks and fermenters up front. We'll be adding those as we grow. We'd have been $500k into it if we'd have gone that route. So there you have it. Breweries of this size are NOT free. So, when asked why you should support your local brewery...

Well - as long as the beer is decent, there you have it.
 
Ok, Time to get serious.

The transfer hose arrived yesterday. That gives us 100' of 1.5" ID transfer hose to soft-plumb our tanks. I need the finishing connectors to plug the holes we don't want to use right off the bat and the bushings to get my elements and probes in and we should be ready to at least put the tanks together. Once that's done we'll water test everything and prove out the process flow.

I was planning on doing a small GF lager this weekend to play with it but I've decided to dedicate the entire weekend to working on the tanks and getting them ready. Our control panel should be done by the middle of next week or by the end so hopefully we'll be ready to go with that when the tanks are finished.

The goal is to be brewing by the end of the month and get through our test batches to dial in the system. We'll start with smaller batches to minimize the cost of bad batches. Once we figure everything out and get all the processes worked out we'll start increasing batch sizes slowly until we're doing full 10 bbl batches.

That's the plan. Course, everyone has a plan until he get's punched in the nose.
 
Exciting weekend coming up! This is our first festival. This afternoon I'll be delivering 3 kegs of beer for Butte's "Original Festival". It's a musical festival at the Original headframe uptown in Butte. We're donating a keg of our stout for the V.I.P. tent and we're selling a couple other kegs to the licensed vendor to sell to the general admission folks.

This will be our first official festival and our first public introduction to a widespread audience. We've had tastings but that's been limited to people who kind of know us and know about us through Facebook, this will be the "thirst" time people will be able to check us out just off the street as it were.

Folks will get to try our signature chocolate stout which the brewery was named after and our house I.P.A. which packs about 68 ibu's but comes across quite a bit milder due to it's grain bill. (No dextrose, all malt.) I also keep it lighter on the front end and a bit heavier on the back. We use Willamette and Amarillo for the flavor and aroma hops which leaves us with a bit of a sweet, fruity kind of nose on the beer. It's quite nice, but doesn't carry the traditional West Coast I.P.A. flavor you sort of get used to in the brew-club meetings. (I do kind of love that Cascade-Simcoe I.P.A. though when it's done right.)

Anyway, we're having our public I.P.O. tonight and it ought to be exciting. Tomorrow it's business as usual - back to working in the brewery and putting those monster tanks together and getting things brewing!
 
Well, the kegs came back empty so I suppose that's a good sign.

Next weekend we have our second festival in a row. We'll be rolling out a couple more kegs and should have a much larger audience to judge our performance on. Hopefully we get some good feedback. This festival will be attended by quite a few of the brewers in this part of the state so it will be a great chance to visit with some of the other fellows and get to know them a bit better.

The control panel is just about done so it's big-tank time. That also means we need to get some bulk grain and hops ordered. I have yeast slurry set up for three of our 5 first beers and I have first generation yeast ready for the others. I still haven't gotten a chance to work on the GF lager. Too much work, too little time.

However, it is exciting finally having all the toys in one place so we can put everything together and make it all work nicely. Next weekend I'll be kegging beer for our final pre-opening festival. That will free me up to focus all my attention on getting the large system up and ready. Till then we won't be brewing any more beer in any quantity.

I have everything I need except time! ;-)
 
We talked to the Food and Beverage department contact to get clarification on what precisely is needed for our commercial application to make Root Beer, Lemonade and Ginger Beer.

The State is pretty much easy-going, however the rep told us that in order to get past the federal inspection we're going to have to do some things. We'll need to put walls around the "cooking area" for our beverages. We'll also have to install a few extra sinks downstairs. I only have a double sink downstairs right now so I'll have to put in at least 3 more down there. We have a triple sink upstairs and we'll need two more up there as well. (Just so you know you need a triple sink for cleaning, a hand washing sink and a "mop sink" both for your brewery operation and your tasting room. Furthermore, your triple-sink needs to be deep enough to "half submerge" the things you'll be cleaning in it.)

All the walls around the "cooking area" need to be washable and we have to have the floor sealed, of course. We knew that going in. I was planning on getting everything cleaned up from construction and then painting the sealant on the floors. I was NOT aware of the rule about walls around the "cooking area". I was hoping we could use a vent hood and corner of our brewery as the kitchen but apparently we need to enclose the room. I need to get more clarification on that as it seems we should be able to use a wall or corner if we like.

Anway, the kitchen thing is going to add a few more thousand dollars to the enterprise, but it will allow us to make and can soft-drinks as well, so it's an investment I suppose. I'll keep you informed and put up pictures of our humble (and it WILL be humble,) kitchen.
 
Last night I put all the connectors, valves, thermoprobes etc. on the big tanks and took stock of what I need to do to finish them up. After that I ordered the remaining parts to do that. I have 5 plugs to put in to finish up the ferrules that are left over for expansion items.

I also need to get some bushings to install my elements and then we should be able to plug in our control panel as soon as it arrives. The tanks were water tested at the plant so I'll only have to do a few hours of that myself, I'm sure. However we're using all TC connectors so it should be alright. (The heating elements are all threaded so that may be a bit of a test, especially with the bushings, but we'll get it worked out with the plumber.)

I need to get some burners under the tanks but we should be within a week or so of firing these guys up. We're getting closer every day!
 
Talked to the state Health Dept. rep and got the skinny on exactly what we have to do to pass inspection. This weekend we'll put up the framing needed to finish the "food prep area". We have all the sinks necessary. I'll take pictures as we put up the walls and manage the "washable ceiling".

We also need to paint and seal the floor which we planned to do all along. Once that's finished we'll plug in the control panel, move the tanks back to their spots and call for our final brewery inspection.

The fire marshal has already been downstairs. He's cool with everything he's seen. We have to do a few things in the taproom, but I need time to get my beer brewed and aging anyway so we have time for that work to be done. I do need my brewery inspected and stamped off A.S.A.P. however.

We should be able to do the brewery inspection by next weekend if all goes to plan. Here's hoping.
 
We built about 36' of walls last weekend. We need to build a few more feet over the next couple nights. Then we'll paint and seal the floor. The double compartment sink you see at the far end of the room will be accompanied by a triple compartment sink. That will take care of our kitchen needs except for a cleanser/chemical storage cabinet which we'll put outside the kitchen area along with a mop-sink which will also be outside the kitchen area on the other side of the wall behind the double compartment sink.

We don't have to have the walls all the way to the ceiling, we DO have to put up washable ceiling tile. So we are going to use the same tile that we'll be putting up on the walls as soon as we've finished them all. We're using washable shower-tile. The health department has already looked at it and approved it for us. I'm hoping we can have the walls up and the floor done by this weekend and have the tile up on the walls and ceiling by Wednesday of next week.

The cabinet for chemical storage is easy to move so we can bring that down anytime and the plumber can do his work with the sinks in a day. That should cover us for our brewery inspection. The only REAL chore is moving the drain line you see up above so it doesn't go directly above the kitchen area. However we only have to move it a couple feet to the left so it won't require a major re-route. Again, the plumber should be able to do everything he needs to in a day.

Then we have to finish some things upstairs to pass inspection up there. We need to do some painting, We need to do some tiling behind the bar, get a lighted exit sign above one of the exit doors, get locks installed as necessary to impede access to the other businesses in the building and have the fire-inspector go through the place. He's already seen it and given us the list so we don't have any surprises. I think we're pretty close to being ready.

Fortunately, while my partner is feverishly working upstairs painting and such I can be producing and aging beer for our opening. It should all work out pretty well.

I love that word, "Should"...

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Man!!! This is great thread! Took me two days to read it all and some I still don't understand. The math ALMOST got me...lol. Good luck, I hope this works well for you.
 
I love how I keep saying "next weekend." I'm going to stop doing that.

We're putting up the last of the walls, and laying some self-leveling mortar so hopefully we can get the floor painted and sealed "next weekend" (IE this weekend.)

Meanwhile I can get the fermenter and lagering room painted and sealed and I can get the milling room primed and painted this weekend. I still need to get the aging room primed and painted later as it's currently being used for aging. However after the lagering room is finished we can turn on the cooler in there and use it for aging while we prime, paint and then seal the floor in the aging room. Then we'll move all the kegs back in there.

Musical beer in the interim.
 
Muddy,

Do you have any long term goals for the distribution side of the brewery? Mainly asking if you only plan on keeping your beer within the state or expanding to distribute regionally? I know the brewery hasn't started but it really looks like you guys will be successful with all the marketing and promos.
 
Ok, we put up another wall last night and we have a small one left to do with a door frame in it. Then we have the entire "kitchen area" framed in. This weekend I can pour some self-leveling cement over a few rough spots and get my 3 compartment sink framed in. We'll also paint and seal the fermenting and lagering rooms. I might also have time to sweep up and prime the milling room.

As for distribution, we've been asking a LOT of questions of the local state breweries about what they do in terms of bbls per day in order to get a feel for what we need to have on hand just to feed our tasting room. Once we get a grip on that we'll expand to local (city) distribution in the first few months after the initial rush dies down. Then we'll start distributing around the counties near us and do as much ourselves as we can until it becomes necessary for us to make the jump to a distributor. That's a really important decision though and that can make or break you. You HAVE to have a big enough following to distribute enough beer to make up for what you lose per keg when you go through a distributor.

You stop having to pay taxes yourself (The distributor does it at that point,) but they don't take any responsibility for how your beer comes out on the other end so you have to take it upon yourself to babysit all the places where your beer goes and make sure they're cleaning the lines and the faucets and making sure your beer is being served properly so you don't get a **** reputation for things that are beyond your control. If a restaurant calls up and says "This keg sucks." the distributor just picks up the quarter used keg and brings it back to you and doesn't pay you for it. and you're **** out of luck.

So, by the time you go to a distributor who's going to take your beer around the state or beyond state lines you need to have a VERY solid following and you need to know that wherever your beer is going the people serving it are experienced and committed to serving a good product.

So, yes we do eventually plan to distribute out and about but I expect that will take some time. Baby steps. We're just getting started here. We just want to get open and serve a great beer in a super atmosphere. Once word starts spreading locally it will make it much easier for us to distribute locally and then beyond.
 
Good luck Muddy Creek. I know two guys that started over 20 years ago. They are both classified as "regional" not microbreweries anymore. The both have become very wealthy and are doing what they love. I think that the market has filled up a lot since then but it is still a nice dream.
 
Well, I got the last wall framed with a door this weekend. I also got all the rough spots in the brewhaus floor smoothed out with self-leveling concrete. Over the week I will prime and paint the brewhaus floor, seal the fermenting room floor and the lagering room floor as well as paint and seal the milling room floor.

Then this weekend we'll put up the washable tile on the brewhaus walls. Then we need to get the washable tile up on the ceiling and have the plumber come in and install the 3 compartment sink and the mop sink. After that we should be pretty close to finished up with the brewery side as far as inspection goes. I'll need to move all my tanks back into the brewhaus and get them hooked up again.

Then I'm off and brewing while the partners get the tasting room finished up. I'll be kicking out 150 kegs of beer and aging it while they get everything finished for inspection so we can FINALLY open.

Before we formally open we'll do the soft-open thing I talked about. We'll have restaurant and tavern owners/managers as well as local business owners and our "fishing hole" (mug club) members in to have the beer for free. They will critique our product and our service as well as our tasting room atmosphere. We'll have them return after we've looked through their comments and we'll try to respond individually to their comments to show them that we have taken their advice seriously. On their second tasting we hope that they see that we've improved.

This way we get training for our staff, introduce our products to potential accounts and develop loyalty among our customer base.

After that we're ready for our opening. Hopefully we will have generated a buzz from the soft-opening. We'll promote with a live radio show. We already have a couple commercials that we've filmed that are kinda funny. We have a theme called "Truth in Advertising." Basically the concept is that we may not do everything well, but we make great beer.

Anyway, tonight I'll head back to the brewery after work and seal the fermenting room floor. That's the goal. Tomorrow night I'll plan on priming the brewhaus floor. Tuesday I'll paint the brewhaus floor, Wednesday I'll seal the lagering room floor, Thursday I'll seal the brewhaus floor, Friday I'll paint the milling room floor and this weekend we'll put up the washable tile walls and I'll have my assistant seal the milling room floor.

If we have enough help we'll try to get the ceiling done as well.

It's going to be a busy week. I'll try to take pictures.
 
Well this week I'm trying to stay on track to make more progress over the weekend. To that end I've sealed both the fermenting room floor and the lagering room floor on Monday and Tuesday night. Tonight I will paint the milling room floor. (It was primed over the weekend.) I'm still waiting for some of the self-leveling cement, some of which was not all that awesome to finish drying so I can prime, paint and seal the brewhaus floor.

As I mentioned the final wall was framed and the door was framed in as well. We'll be hanging the "swinging walls" this weekend so we cam move the big tanks back in. Depending on how much we get done on the brewhaus floor by Saturday we'll either be hanging washable ceiling or washable walls in the brewhaus.

Either way, we're getting closer to calling for our final inspection.

Below are a few photos of the before's while we still have some. I give you the fermenting room with concrete sealant on the floor. We need to put trim around the edges and pull up the tape around the drain trough and it's all ready for prime-time.

I also have a photo of our lagering room. It has some cool jelly-jar lights and you can see a couple of the "sticker-shock" sprinkler heads in the photo along with a really really awful tape and texture job on the ceiling. (I didn't do that. Don't blame me.)

Then there's a photo of the milling room floor with simple primer on it so you can see how much better it looks with the gray paint and concrete sealer and shark-grip. (fermenting room floor picture.)

Finally, there's a photo of the last framed wall with the door. We stole a door from the original building that we replaced with one of our own that we built. I don't know if I ever put a photo of it up here. We had it built from 2x6s and then stained. It's a beautiful door. We then took the old exterior door and pirated it for our new brewhaus door.

Found some more photos...

Here's our first attempt to put up the door without the framed wall. It was... Unsuccessful.

Then we have a couple photos of the door we built to replace the exterior door to the brewery. It's a really beautiful door and has already survived the first break-in attempt. Somebody really really wanted to get some beer though. They tried the door and when they couldn't break it they attempted to tear down half of a fence that belongs to the building owners in order to get to another section of the brewery. This too lead them to a blind alley of locked doors.

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We have the brewhaus floor painted and sealed and one of the swinging walls hung. Now we can start putting up the brite-white. (I'll probably start on that tonight.) We'll also bring in the three compartment sink and install that. The utility sink is already in.

We have to move all the kegs out of the aging room, paint and seal the floor in there and that finishes all the floors. That should take me two days.

After the brite-white is on the walls in the brewhaus, all we need to do is get the ceiling up and the big tanks moved back in and I think we're almost ready for inspection. I do need to have a hood put over the BK but other than that we ought to be ready to roll. I'm working each evening after work and we are getting quite a bit done so hopefully we'll call for inspection sooner than later.

Meanwhile they've chosen paint and they've started painting test swatches upstairs in the tasting room. As soon as we get some actual painting done up there I'm sure there will be pictures on the facebook page showing progress updates. I'll see if I can snag a few for here as well.

Update:

Last night I put up three panels of the bright-white on the brewhaus walls. I'll put up a few more this evening. Moving right along.
 
Got the brite-white up on the walls. Was a bit of a pain and we'll have to get the trim and the silicon sealant on the floors but we now have "washable walls". I had to peel up a bit of the floor paint as it wasn't quite sealed properly. After the underlayment dries a bit better I'll prime again and repaint and seal.

We also have the last "Hinged Wall" hung up. (You can see the open spot in the wall in one of the pictures.) We can open up the wall to bring in the large tanks etc. then close it for inspection. Next we need to have the ceiling either mudded and painted with washable latex or put the brite white up there for a washable surface. After looking it over we really think it will be altogether easier to have it mudded and painted. We'll hire a guy to do all the mud work. There's a guy in town who's phenomenal and really reasonable and that's probably going to be the best way to do it in a time-effective manner.

Meanwhile we'll be putting in the final 3 compartment sink, installing the mop-sink on the other side of the walls and bringing down our cleaning and chemical storage cabinet. The plumber will plumb the sinks in, hook up our fire line to the sprinkler system and I need to get the tin guys to install our hood over the Brew Kettle after we move it back into the brewhaus.

This week I have to put some self-leveling cement in the aging room to fill some gaps in floor and then we'll prime, paint and seal that room's floor. Then it will be all ready for inspection as well.

The electricians need to install a 50 amp breaker, but that's an hour job. We need them to run a line over to our control panel so we can plug our tanks in and then we can ask our inspectors to do the final inspection of our brewery.

Assuming I've read through the list of everything we need to do to pass inspection properly we'll get through it on our first look-through and the brewery will be good to go.

(Course they're still working on the tasting room, but that's not my problem.)

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Aaaand I lied.

Some time ago we were visited by Spokes Mobile Canning from Spokane. They pitched us on the idea of bringing their canning equipment into the brewery and doing a canning run for us. The price breakdown for such a run was really attractive.

The catch was that they had no good way to can from kegs. They said they'd look into it but that it wasn't something they could currently do very effectively. We looked at it over time and decided ultimately that we'd go ahead and pick up two 5 bbl brite tanks from Stout tanks in Portland so that we could have tanks for canning as well as carbing beer for kegging.

So... We now have a pair of brite tanks which we hope to mate.
 
Wow this has been (and still is) quite the journey! Thanks for continuing to share everything with us. What is the projected opening date now?
 
I can't say that until I fire up the kettles and start brewing our test batches. However we are getting much closer to that point. I got my ceiling up this weekend and our mudder/texture guy will get up there on Tuesday to get started. Tonight I'm getting a heater into the room to raise the temperature in there so the mud will dry. Then this weekend we'll get the primer and paint up on the ceiling.

After that's finished we'll put in the 3 compartment sink to go with the double compartment sink. I'll have the plumber put in all sinks along with our mop sink. We'll bring down the cabinet to hold all our cleaning supplies, wash everything print our our cleaning and sanitization procedures for all our equipment and call up the health inspector for the final inspection. Once he looks it over and we (hopefully) pass we can call the fire and electrical inspector and have him look over all the wiring and the sprinkler lines and once they give the go-ahead the brewhaus is cleared.

My partner still has to do some work upstairs but I'll be ready to start brewing on the 10 bbl system and aging the beer in large batches once we get all our recipes dialed in. That will give him about 1 month to get all his stuff finished and inspected. In the meantime we'll be hiring staff and training them so we can do a soft-opening and begin prepping some local accounts once we know how much volume we can expect in the taproom.

I will let you know when the brewhaus passes it's final inspections because I expect we'll be officially open about a month after that.
 
I should be just a bit clearer. After the partners and taste-testers have approved my test batches, THEN it will be about a month after that. ;)

It's critical that I dial in the recipes on the larger system, obviously. We don't want to serve crappy beer right out of the gate. It's bad enough to open later than we wanted, to open late with crap beer... well. You can see where THAT would go.
 
Alright. I checked the brewhaus on a late lunch today. My mud-guy has been in and applied the first coat. As long as I can keep the heaters going we should be priming by Friday. That means we'll be installing sinks and having the plumber... um plumb early next week.

Man, I'm ready to have this thing finished. So, so ready.

We'll be doing silicone corners and edging, floor, corner and edging trim and going over everything with a good washdown. Then it will be time for a call to the health dept. inspector.

Meanwhile we have amassed a $13k electrical bill. Not bad considering it's an electric brewery. The painting continues in the tasting room. We've found a professional tile and flooring installer who apparently is willing to work for free beer.

I'll take some pictures of the ceiling tonight if the lighting is good enough. You can see how we're comin along. We can almost reach the tap-handles.
 
Alright, I admit - I didn't take pictures of the ceiling yet. However we did install the 3 compartment sink last night to go along with the existing two compartment sink. This weekend we'll "top it" with laminate and the plumber will plumb all the sinks early next week. Hopefully we'll also be priming and painting the ceiling this weekend and that will be that for the brewhaus in terms of paintable walls, floor and ceiling as well as the necessary sinks.

I'll be bringing in a metal cabinet for cleaning material storage and I'm printing out the previously mentioned cleaning procedures this weekend for our Health inspector so he can go through it all. With that we should be able to pass our final brewery health inspection and cross it off the list.

I WILL get photos of the "before and after" with the sink and ceiling so you can see how nice it all looks once we've cleaned everything up.
 
Ok, got the primer up on Saturday and all the "trim work" for the finishing paint done yesterday. I also got the sink laminate on so all the sinks can be installed today or tomorrow.

That should be done along with the black-pipe to give us some additional heat backup for the electrical system. I'll finish the painting tonight and possibly tomorrow and put up the splash guards on the three compartment sink tonight and tomorrow and trim out the sink.

Then on Tues/Weds I'll put up the quarter rounds in the corners, along with the silicone. Next will come the Trex board and silicone trim pieces on the floor and the painted trim along the tops of the walls and we should be about finished. I plan on having the inspector in on Friday to either have him approve us or have him tell us what we have to do in order to pass inspection by NEXT Friday.

I'll be posting "all the before and after" photos when everything is formally finished.
 
I ended up taking Tuesday off because my oldest daughter remains a bit ill and I had to stay home with her. However Monday night I DID get the ceiling painted and all the quarter round trim pieces painted. I also got the backsplash for the sink prepared.

Today I'll put the last of the laminate on the three compartment sink and prep the aging room for self-leveling concrete. That way we should be able to prime and paint the floor by thursday and Friday. Then over the weekend we can seal it.

Meanwhile I'll be putting up trim on the floor and at the top of the brewhaus walls and covering all the screws with silicone. I think I will move the health inspection to Monday so I have the weekend to finish everything up and clean nicely. By then we ought to be able to pass inspection.

After that it's Fire Marshall, Electrical Inspector and then State inspection who has told us all he cares about is that the walls and doors are where we said they'd be on the drawings we submitted.

As soon as I've finished the health inspection I can move my big tanks back in and start brewing on the large scale with my test batches, getting my recipes dialed in. Due to a city but not state-code isntallation of the fire line, the contractor has to dig up the line for the sprinklers and reinstall it, but fortunately he's doing that on his dime. Once he's done the plumber will put the boot on the line and the sprinkler guys will attach to the new line.

(That's when the fire marshall and electrical inspector can come in.) Hopefully by then we have all the work done upstairs and we can get all the inspections done in one weeks worth of look-overs and everyone can be happy.

I'll be brewing and brite-tanking like mad in the meantime. Hopefully we'll have about 900 gallons of beer ready at a moment's notice when we ARE licensed and can do our soft opening. We'll begin the process of talking to restaurants and local pubs as soon as we start brewing again to begin greasing the wheels for accounts. Before we formally sign anything we want to know what the taproom is doing but we want to be ready to set up accounts as soon as we know what to expect in the taproom.

Pictures ARE coming. Honest. I have befores. Just waiting a few more days for the afters. I would like to show some contrast.
 
Before...

What you see below are photos of the three compartment sink in the building phase, as well as the ceiling after we firred out a bit of it with extra plywood and sheetrock where it was really uneven and then had the mud and texture guy come in and do his work.

The next stages included covering the sink with laminate, as well as painting with primer and washable latex. The corners were all trimmed with silicone and quarter round. Today, (I expect,) the plumber is installing all the sinks. I hoped he'd be in on Tuesday but the temperature dropped so he's been running around town taking care of all the heaters and boilers. Anyway, the ceiling has been painted, the top of the sink laminated and the backsplash put on. I've primed the legs of the sink and put up all the corner trim.

This weekend we'll finish all the floor trim and put laminate on the front of the sink. I'll also put silicone over all the small screws in the white tile-board and we should be just about finished with the brewhaus side. I'm doing the self-leveling cement in the aging room tonight and after it's dried I'll prime the floor tomorrow and paint and seal it over the weekend. That puts us ready for final inspection on Monday or Tuesday.

Monday we have the electricians installing the power for our mill and our control panel so the Electrical inspection can take place after they are finished and after our sprinkler line is "refinished" the fire marshall can come in, inspect and approve that.

Finally the state inspector can take a look-see, ensure that all the walls are where the are supposed to be and we should get the final pass.

In short, I hope to have the brewery side sewn up very shortly.

Note, I used the word "Hope".

brewhaus.jpg


sink4.jpg


sink2.jpg


sink3.jpg


mud.jpg


mud2.jpg
 
Alright, the plumber got the sinks hooked up last night. I swept and washed the floor in the aging room so I can put down the leveling cement tonight. By tomorrow I can prime and by Sunday I can paint it. Hopefully I will be putting down the sealant late Sunday so we can do the health inspection Monday.

We have all the floor trim for the brewhaus. The plan will be to put that on and if we have the bodies, to move the big tanks back into the room over the weekend. I'll also put white silicone over all the screws in the white paneling.

Monday the Electricians are coming in to do some work for us installing the wiring for the control panel and the mill. That should cover us with the electrical inspector. I'll have "After" photos for you sometime early next week after we finish the health and electrical inspection.

Anyway, I have to order my malt, and hops for our first test batches. With any luck I will have finished my water test and will be brewing just about this time next week.
 
The floor trim is installed in the brewhaus, the aging room floor is leveled, primed and painted. I'll be sealing it tonight after work. Today (not Monday, unfortunately,) the electricians are putting the breakers in for the control panel and the milling room. At least that's the last I was told. I need to go check on them shortly.

I've looked at the floor in the brewhaus and after all the construction we've done in there after "finishing" the floor I'm thinking I may want to slap another coat of paint and sealant on the floor just to be sure the health inspector is happy. I'm going to mop tonight and see how it looks just to be sure.

Otherwise, I think we're about ready to call the health inspector and have him do his walkthrough. I have to write up a couple of documents for him about our cleaning procedures so he can review them but that's about it.

Soon as it's all cleared I'll get photos of the "finished" brewhaus out to you all.
 
I love this thread! Looking forward to your future success.
 
All the laminate is on the sinks, along with silicone to make it a bit prettier. I mopped the brewhaus floor last night and I think I will put another coat of paint on it this evening. (We have an inspection tomorrow at 1:15)

I'll be sending in the floor-plan and cleaning instructions this afternoon for review. With any luck the inspector will approve everything and we'll be good-to-go by Friday night with our Health Inspection. If not, I'll have the weekend to clean up any outstanding issues and I can have him back on Monday or Tuesday to look things over again.

The fire-line was re-done to state code. (It was done to city-code by the excavator before and it turned out to be insufficient so he had to dig it up and put in a better pipe. He ended up doing the second dig free of charge.) The plumber and the sprinkler guys will have the system done (supposedly,) by Tuesday of next week.

I still haven't seen the electricians, but I get daily email from them promising that they'll come and take care of me. I'm beginning to wonder about that...

Last night I ordered about $2200 worth of grain, hops and yeast. That should be enough for test batches of all our initial beers. If everything works out, we'll have a bit of beer in the aging rooms, if we have some trouble we won't be out too much beer for the experience of getting started on the big brew kettles. On the plus side we will also have the beginnings of a large base-stock.

It's getting real now. Really real. But after this lengthy journey, this meme takes on all new meaning for Wig and the guys at Muddy Creek...

one-does-not-simply-meme-brewing-brewery-professional-job.jpg
 

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