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

[MuddyCreek]

Doing our next seasonal next week.

I'll be brewing an Irish Red for Saint Patty's day. Exciting stuff. Very exciting.

 

[MuddyCreek]

So we transferred the Muddy Creek to kegs on Thursday last week. That went very well.

Yesterday we moved just under 8 bbls of Dirty Blonde to the brite tanks to carbonate. It should be ready to keg by Tuesday.

We brewed 8 bbls of Wheat ale (Good Time) on Saturday and had our best brew day by far. Our brewhaus efficiency was up, our brew time was down all in all, everything went pretty well.

I did have a stuck fermentation with my Skinny Cow from last week so I had to pitch a bit more yeast. I'm hoping that will fire up the fermentation and finish it out. I would hate to have to pitch 7.5 bbls of I.P.A. (We used a ton of hops on that.) If it doesn't pick up this afternoon, I'll do the stir start and perhaps toss some yeast energizer in there as well.

 

[g-star]

Sorry that I haven't had a chance to go through all 33 pages, but I was wondering if you had previous professional brewing experience or formal training (Siebel, UC Davis, etc.) before starting your brewery?

Thanks and good luck.

 

[todd_k]

Gluten free

thank you! I'm halfway through the thread and I'm scrolling around thinking "what the hell is GF?!?!?"

 

[MuddyCreek]

"GF is Gluten Free."

No, I haven't had formal training. I've been brewing for about 11 years. Surprisingly, things have gone pretty well so far. However we're just getting started. As I mentioned in my last post I'm having a bit of trouble with an I.P.A. and a stuck fermentation but I'm working on getting it going again.

We have a team of fellows helping out and one of them is a chemist with a doctorate in bio-engineering with an emphasis on yeast cultures. He's been a huge help and has really been a big part of our success. I've also leaned heavily on our local brewers who have a great deal of experience in the area.

Admittedly we aren't trying to change the world up front. We are trying to brew good beer that meets BCPA guidelines and stands out with the local breweries and draws people in. Over time we'll expand our horizons and try some more adventurous recipes but right now we are sticking to some standard styles. We make a Stout, a Wheat Ale, a Blonde, an Amber and an I.P.A. I have several rotators but we aren't doing anything particularly crazy.

We have a comfortable industrial-chic feel to our tap house that we think will appeal to people of various ages and we've managed to fall into a great location that's right in the middle of several breweries and our local distillery. Essentially we're right in the thick of it.

We have a great marketing team and we happen to be pretty good at social media so we are great at promoting ourselves. We've gotten nearly 2000 likes on FB and we haven't even opened yet. The tastings we have done have gone very well and people seem to like the products very well.

I've never claimed to be the worlds greatest brewer. In fact I admit that I spend a good amount of my time trying to figure out more efficient ways to do just about everything. This thread was started in order to help other folks figure out better ways to work through the minefield that is starting a professional brewery. We had just about the perfect setup. A mid-sized town with a tremendous appetite for beer with only 1 brewery and several huge festivals each summer.

Despite all the things going our way, it's still taken us a year and a half to get going and way more money than we expected. Nonetheless the taproom partner is just about ready to put a pin in the calendar and state an opening date.

It seems that every week I learn something new about our system and every week I find out that I need to learn something more about the trade. For everything I think I know there are 10 things I either don't know or I forgot about that slow me down or trip me up. Checklists, calendars and organizers are you good friends.

But, like I said last week we had our best ever brew day. We were finished with the transfer to the fermenters by 2:00 which is far and away our best ever. (There have been weeks when we've been at it until 1:00 a.m. so that's a HUGE improvement.) My aging room is practically full and I need to start putting all this beer into people!

That's pretty key also because our bank payments go up to about 2.5k in March and it sure would be nice to have some revenue flowing so I'm not paying that out of my own pocket.

 

[todd_k]

So what is the backup plan for when the dumb-waiter breaks? Also, with all of the snow in the winter and this being an old building, what about water seeping into the basement once the snow starts to melt?

 

[ImNoExpert]

Sounds like you've been able to roll with whatever setbacks have come your way. Keep it up! You're almost there!

 

[MuddyCreek]

Fine questions Todd.

I actually haven't addressed these items in the thread, surprisingly enough. I think I've talked a bit about the dumb waiter, but we are just now having more work done on it.

My neighbor is a welder. He is currently adding some rails from the top of the dumb-waiter to the bottom where some particularly safety-conscious fellows removed the rails long-ago to make the dumb-waiter inoperable. Today that work will be finished. We have already attached a 2000 lb winch and welded a mounting bracket that the winch connects to at the top of the dumb waiter.

Now, admittedly, if the dumb waiter fails, we're in a bit of a pickle. Currently we don't have a backup plan other than using a "stair-climber" dolly to move kegs up the two flights of stairs we need. We have had a couple of engineers look at our winch system and confirm that it is sound so we feel pretty good about it and we plan on getting a back up winch for our current one. However, I admit this IS a point of failure that is probably a fairly critical path for us.

The good news is that we have a pretty big storage room upstairs and we can currently store as many as 30 or 40 bbls of beer in our cooler if we had to. Furthermore, we could purchase some additional 2.5 bbl brite tanks that would fit in our cooler and some pumps that could move beer up the headspace if absolutely necessary so if disaster DID strike I suppose we could figure out a way to pump beer up to some brite tanks into the cooling room for direct serving. Ideally we'd be up and running for a bit so we could afford those brite tanks though. ;-)

As for the snow, well - we've already been through a winter here and we've had to deal with the melting snow. Our sidewalks are vaulted, meaning the rooms extend underneath the sidewalks. Since the building is CRAZY old, the cement is less than spectacular and there is in fact quite a bit of leaking when we have either melting or heavy rain. And the sidewalks are directly over our fermenting and lagering rooms. (Which are heavily insulated and don't like to get wet!)

So we had to cover the tops of the rooms with an angled lid which allowed melt and rain water to drain toward a drain vent which naturally leads toward the floor drains cut into the room.

Good times!

And now for something completely different! Our Graphics Guy has Entered the Building! The logo has been added to what we call "The Tower." Enjoy a bit more eye candy.

 

[kombat]

I've got to admit, I'm a thread-junkie when it comes to this thread. Every time it pops to the top of my "subscribed threads" list, I can't help but click it, hoping for more pictures.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well then you'll be thrilled tomorrow. We're pouring epoxy on the bar tonight. And we've done one of our test tables too. My camera is a bit crappy as you can see but I'll take a photo or two tonight anyway.

 

[MuddyCreek]

As promised - We poured epoxy on the bar last night, and the large window (the big metal one,) has been refitted with barn wood insets. So now it's a display case.

I give you the Muddy Creek Taproom bar and display case back-ground...

With any luck, in a few days I'll have a picture of our license. (We're getting our final inspection today. Wish us luck.)

 

[Konadog]

Well, it's been a long road, but good luck with your final inspection and getting your license!

This thread has been one of the best I have read in a long time. Way better than a reality show with real situations, not made up drama.

 

[kombat]

Looks beautiful! What are the inlays on the bar-top, is that custom-cut wood, or some kind of pre-printed tiling?

 

[todd_k]

I know you're a software developer but how have you balanced both your day job and all of the brewery work? Do you just do contract work or are you a full time employee somewhere? It seems like keeping the software job has been a great idea based on the delays you have experienced, especially stuff that has been out of your control like the tank delivery. Do you think you would be any further along without the software job? Or perhaps you would be homeless without it!

 

[jiMithing83]

Bar top looks super classy, nice choice! Good luck on the inspection and keep the stories/pictures coming

 

[MuddyCreek]

The bar top is 1/8" birch sheets that we've cut into patterns and stained. They were put over the plywood base and glued down. Then of course we put the epoxy over them. In fairness I will point out that my partner has taken on the taproom and I haven't done much with it.

A carpenter has done most of the work on the bar. Chris, (the partner,) has done a little bit of work on it and we (the owners,) poured the epoxy last night, but the building of the bar, cutting of the birch sheets and placement of the barnwood etc. were done by a master carpenter.

The rest of the work in the taproom has been a combination of hired-out work, volunteer work and owner-driven work. We did the sanding of the floor, we had volunteers come in and help us with framing of new walls etc. We have a hired fellow who does a bit of everything who put the barn wood in the display case for example and has done a great deal of general sheet rocking, mudding, priming etc.

Chris (partner,) and his wife Cindy did a great deal of painting along with a little help from some volunteers. Our table tops have been sanded down by volunteers and the owners are currently staining them and we'll be pouring epoxy on them in the next couple days.

As for the brewhaus, the owners have done most of the work down there except for the really heavy lifting where we got some volunteer help. Of course we had contractors do the electrical and plumbing, but all the concrete cutting and framing etc. we did.

Our Day Jobs were critical from the very beginning. Originally we were going to go with a smaller system but we didn't want to get into a situation where we had to constantly brew. (We read you other guys' threads you see...) So we went with a 10 bbl system so we could brew on the weekends and hopefully have enough beer to keep the taphouse going through the week.

We all have pretty well-paying jobs. That allowed us to have enough financial muscle to get a loan from the bank to finance the brewery. Then, when we needed to go BACK to the bank we were able to use the current brewery assets (tanks, equipment etc. plus some of our other personal assets READ PROPERTY) to secure an additional 100k. NOTE, starting a brewery is NOT for the faint-hearted. This ****'s expensive.

We were just contacted by an insurance agent who specializes in breweries. (We were working with another firm who was just sort of putting together a general policy for us with liability.) Anyway these guys have insurance that covers our equipment, bad batches, alcohol related liability etc. It costs about 10k a year. (OUCH, I mean G'Dang - OUCH) but that's better than the alternative. So I think we're going to go with them.

So to shorten up the novel this post has become, the day jobs have been and are critical for OUR process. We've hired a taproom manager who will see to it that the taproom is covered throughout the day and that we are NEVER bothered at our regular jobs and I have a particularly dependable brewery assistant who takes very good care of my brewhaus during the day so I can count on her to manage things for me while I'm at work.

What I've found is that things have been very efficient. We are spending some money in salary for these people to be care-takers but it frees us up to do our day-jobs so we don't have to take any money from the brewery for ourselves. That means the net is WAY in our favor.

If all goes well, we may find we have to brew more than just on the weekends. That will be a good problem to have. I'll have to hire another brewer and get him or her accustomed to our processes and when we're satisfied that we have consistency in our products we can start churning out batches during the week as well. That will give me some extra flexibility and we can consider expanding our distribution as well as supporting our taproom.

That's the plan anyway. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

 

[MuddyCreek]

We PASSED

Within a few days, perhaps a week I'll have a photo of our "official" brewery licence. However, the good news is that both the brewery and taproom passed on our first run.

We've already gone through the fire-marshal and the electrical and plumbing Gods. The Health inspector has formally approved the brewery and he looked at the taproom a few weeks ago and said if that was the formal inspection we would have passed then.

So, we're good to go as soon as the official piece of paper arrives.

When it does we'll announce our grand opening officially. We have our first soft opening in about 10 days and our second one (twice as large,) a few days after that.

We also did a test run on one of our less finished cable-reel table tops with the epoxy. This is what it looks like before we did much sanding. We think they'll look GREAT when we've finished sanding all the others. The large grooves in the middle of the tables will be filled with rope or pennies and then covered with epoxy. The hole dead center in the table will have a large bottle with some barley stalks, and perhaps a fresh hop cone now and then.

These are the tall "standing tables". We have sit-down tables too and reels that fit anywhere from 2 to 8 people at them. Altogether we have 16 tables.

I know a couple of the table pictures are almost identical but one shows some of the imperfections in the table top. (We really LIKE that. We're going for an industrial-chic sort of look and the tables go very nicely.)

Anyway, there you go.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Long weekend. I actually took a day off on Sunday. First one I can remember in the longest time.

I got back to it on Monday though. Over the weekend we brewed some Amber. It was our biggest batch at our best efficiency yet. We're getting better with every brew cycle. I still have some kinks to work out between the boil and moving the wort through the chiller into the fermenters. That's my next major quagmire to work through. But one step at a time, I suppose.

Anyway, I brewed 9.5 bbls of Amber this weekend so we're all happy about that. I have 8 bbls of I.P.A. in cold crash, and another 8 bbls of Wheat Ale that's done fermenting and just waiting to cold crash. I'll move the I.P.A. to the brites tonight and the wheat into the cold-crash either tonight or tomorrow.

Over the weekend we'll be brewing our stout and ideally we'll get a good 9.5 to 10 bbls out of that.

In the taproom, we've put the first coat of polyurethane on the floor, we hope to have at least two and perhaps three by Monday. (We're pretty much doing nothing but sealing the floor and finishing tables at this point.)

We've got the cooler running upstairs and started moving kegs up for our first soft opening which is less than a week away. We tried to work with a local charity and give half the proceeds for our 2nd soft opening to them, but they were uncomfortable with the idea. (They're a local anti-teen drinking organization and there's obviously something of a conflict of interest there.) They would rather have us post something regarding drinking and driving, which of course we're willing to do.

That leaves us looking for another local charity to donate some money to from our 2nd soft opening.

Our BIG sign should be installed sometime in the middle of next week. We're very excited about that. It's a 10' tall and 4' wide sign that should really get us not iced. We'll also start the radio spots pretty soon and when we do our grand opening on the 27th we'll do a live radio broadcast and a "giveaway" to help promote the opening.

Very exciting times for us Muddy Creekers. I'll try to get some video so you can see the mayhem that we expect will happen upon opening.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Another day in the life.

So thus far we've been "unfiltered". We've used extensive cold-crashing and our conicals to ferret out as much trub and gunk as we can and then we let the kegs age for awhile to settle and we accept that the first few pours are a bit, shall we say, chewy. After that, they've been nice and clear however.

Well, last night we put our first inline filter on the system while we were transferring the I.P.A. to the brite tanks. We had to stop about 5 times to clean out the filter, so I suppose that means it was doing something right. I want to get another filter or two and utilize descending gradients to do a better job but for now we're happy that we're doing SOME filtration along with our cold crashing. We'll see how it turns out in the beer in a few weeks, I suppose.

 

[sandyeggoxj]

Time for a lenticular filter!

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, the sun is just about to rise. I think by Friday afternoon we'll have our license.

We have a few more papers to file, a couple more kegs to haul up the dumb-waiter, a few more shanks to put through the wall but basically we're about ready for our soft opening on Monday.

I believe the taproom manager has a training scheduled for the weekend and I have a couple kegs of beer that didn't turn out from our 40 gallon test system that they're going to "practice" on. The beer isn't sour or bad, it just isn't very good. However it's carbonated and they can learn to pour on it.

They'll also learn to do transactions, handle opening and closing, deal with customer interactions and I'll have to prepare some information about our products for them to learn and be able to discuss.

I'm heading down this evening to get some more beer ready for it's public. (I LOVE my brite tanks.)

 

[MuddyCreek]

Admittedly this post will be a little redundant in terms of photos, but I wanted to give you a pictorial history of Muddy Creek (with dates.)

11-22-13 ~ We announced that we were starting a commercial brewery.
12-7-13 ~ We secured funding from our bank.
11-12-14 ~ Almost a year to the day later we were approved for the manufacture and sale of soft drinks.
2-12-15 ~ We passed our Federal Inspection for Brewery Licensure
2-20-15 ~ Today is our City Inspection. Wish us luck.

I've posted these so you can sort of see before then after photos for the brewery and the taproom. I hope you enjoy the transformation as much as we do.

 

[kombat]

Very inspiring! If I wasn't a 2,000 mile drive, I'd come visit you.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Just got word.

We passed our city inspection with some issues to have the electricians deal with A.S.A.P. downstairs. However they'll approve anyway.

WE ARE GOOD!

We JUST RECEIVED OUR OFFICIAL CERTIFICATION from the STATE.

(Sorry about the excessive caps.) I'm a wee bit excited. We are LICENSED baby! I could sell you a beer RIGHT NOW!

 

[plumber_bob]

It's been a long journey for you guys. Glad to see the last of it done, signed, sealed, and delivered!:rockin:

I'm interested to know how Monday goes!

pb

 

[NewJersey]

Congratulations! Time to get that business rolling! Good luck!

 

[Genacide]

Congratulations!!!

Do you have a rough idea of where your startup capital has gone to? Something like 30% brewing equipment, 10% serving equipment, 40% building repairs and construction?

 

[supermutantbrewmaster]

Congrats! I wasn't even brewing when you started this thread and now I dream of following in your footsteps. Very inspiring!

 

[ImNoExpert]

Please sell me a beer right now!

 

[WrkdbfGuy]

Congrats! If I give you a dollar will you sign it, frame it and hang it behind your new bar?

Bill

 

[MuddyCreek]

Tonight we train staff, Tomorrow I brew stout, Monday we do a soft opening.

Life is good.

By the way, at lunch we tried out the nitro tap on the "training beer". It almost made the crappy stuff alright. Almost. It turns our thin, practically flavorless wheat ale that didn't attenuate enough into liquid silk. That is still a bit flavorless but has a very nice head and a super texture.

 

[MuddyCreek]

"Do you have a rough idea of where your startup capital has gone to? Something like 30% brewing equipment, 10% serving equipment, 40% building repairs and construction?"

That's a good question Genacide. I know we have put about 70k into the building including the fire suppression system.

Then there's the brewing system that ran us probably about 40 or 50k altogether. But that includes everything from the kettles to the kegs.

We've been paying rent on the building for about a year, but we got such a screaming deal on it that it's hardly a dent. However utilities have been a bit more so altogether that's around 10 to 15k.

General contractor payments have probably cost us around 60k. (Construction, Plumbing, electrical, Tin and steel fabrication etc.)

Another 15 to 20k for general construction materials.

We have paid a fellow who is basically our "right hand man" he's been with us for around 6 to 8 months. He's probably been paid in the zone of 15k by now.

Then there's Materials, Barley, hops, cleansing chemicals. I'd say we're in at least another 15k for that. Probably a bit more at this point. (I need to make another grain order soon, in fact.)

So, when you add all that up...

You'll notice the owners haven't taken any money out and we've been paying IN for the whole time so it sorta sucks... And as I've pointed out the entire time, we couldn't possibly find a way to do this ANY less expensively. I mean we cut costs everywhere we could.

So, starting a brewery really isn't for the faint of heart. But boy oh boy, is it rewarding. Seeing people enjoy that pint of stout or I.P.A. is a heartwarming experience. Of course you all know that already.

 

[smcinco]

Best of luck, your persistence is inspirational. We have some real hacks around here (edit: where I live, not HBT, of course) who seemingly opened on a whim, obviously the opposite of what you've done. Cheers!

 

[rwgaro]

Congrats!!! Very very inspiring!

 

[beergolf]

Hey Muddy.

I have been folowing this thread since the start. You have my respect. I love how you ahve pretty much put it all out there, the good and the bad.

Very informative.

Congrats and I wish you all the best. I hope your efforts really pay off.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Congrats and I wish you all the best. I hope your efforts really pay off.

Me Too!

 

[WilliamSlayer]

Being able to see the finish line. ... priceless.

 

[MuddyCreek]

This just in...

In case you didn't know, dialing in nitro taps is a *****. More on this later when I know what the hell I'm doing.

However, the Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout DOES taste really good if you're willing to wait a short lifetime for the foam to die down. We just have to figure out the right incoming carb-level for the beer so it doesn't take forever to pour a pint.

It's awful nice though. Mute's the flavor just a bit but adds tons of richness.

 

[OldWorld]

Try producing a keg of the stout with regular gas instead of nitro. I used to get Old Rasputin from north coast on CO2 at a local bar...The brew master argued with the owner about it, but the owner insisted he found the beer to be much more bold on CO2...

I gotta say nitro stouts are great but I also like a stout on conventional beer gas. I hope you get the beer dialed in. I think one way to fix the problem is to use the 16.9 ounce english style glass.

The extra space allows the beer to cascade more efficiently. But you know the beer geeks probably won't mind waiting to get the stout anyways. You are truly blessed to be living the dream.

 

[MuddyCreek]

OldWorld, we plan on serving Muddy Creek both on CO2 and on Nitro. The flavor is definitely a bit sharper on straight CO2, and richer and a bit more muted on the nitro.

By putting Muddy Creek on both taps we are cheating a bit and getting 2 taps for the price of one, as it were. It also gives people the opportunity to cleanly tell the difference that nitro gives a beer.

Good call on the glass style. We'll look into that and see if it helps.