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

[MuddyCreek]

This just in...

The brewhaus tanks are ON the boat. Sure, it's a 22 day boat ride, but they are ON the boat.

Of course we're going to be the brewery that discovers the Godzilla really DOES exist and OUR boat is going to be the one that also has a ****load of FISH in the hold somewhere... but we'll deal with that later.

 

[MuddyCreek]

It's official!

We have been awarded our conditional brewing licence by the state of Montana. Our permanent licence will be awarded when we complete our inspections and all our facilities match our drawings turned in to the state. We have 90 days from the receipt of our conditional licence (yesterday,) to finish our inspection.

What does this mean?

Technically it means we are legal. Ironically, since our tanks didn't arrive in mid-May as we expected we don't have the 10 bbl system to brew beer so we don't have the means to produce beer on any reasonable scale to provide for our customers. However, as soon as our tanks do arrive and we can get them installed, we can start producing beer and selling it in the taproom.

Once we pass our inspection demonstrating that all our walls are where we said they'd be we get our permanent license and we are good to go.

It's been a trip and we still have TONS of work to do, but the brewery licensing side is over. We still have the food licensing side of it to go for the Root Beer, Lemonade and Ginger-Beer, but we can do that at our leisure.

It's a good day (sorta,) for Muddy Creek Brewery.

 

[Rivenin]

congrats! keep up the updates!

 

[Rivenin]

As far as I know you only have to register a change is the ABV changes specifically or the style.

So, what would happen... since yeast you can't control 100%. If for example, the beer normally goes from 1.050 > 1.012, but for some reason, the yeast had a momentary issue of over eating and it hit 1.008... that changes the ABV. Does that require a message to the feds? or how does that work?

 

[opiate82]

So, what would happen... since yeast you can't control 100%. If for example, the beer normally goes from 1.050 > 1.012, but for some reason, the yeast had a momentary issue of over eating and it hit 1.008... that changes the ABV. Does that require a message to the feds? or how does that work?

I know for the federal level there is an allowable variance in the ABV. I think it is 0.3 tolerance in either direction from the listed ABV but don't quote me on that.

Sounds like when it comes to pre-registering his beers that is a state level thing and am not sure about his local laws.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Opiate is right, there's some play in the percentage. You have to be in the ballpark within just about .5 of a percentage point as I understand it.

You gotta know your yeast and how it behaves. You spend a great deal of time paying attention to how many live cells you have in your yeast before you pitch it and you take care not to pitch too many generations of yeast. When you do that you get inconsistent beer that your customers start complaining about underneath their breath and to people on the street.

It's not like the State guys or the Feds are sitting at the bar with hydrometers waiting on you. I'm not exactly how sure how often we are checked for ABV. I'll have to ask a few of the other guys around the state about that.

 

[globetrekker]

Like all of us homebrewers that dream about what you are doing all the time but don't have the balls or the finances to actually do it, I say good luck and live the dream!
Thanks for sharing it with us.

 

[MuddyCreek]

The fire-line is IN!

Last week as I was getting ready to leave town for the lake the excavators were digging the trench to lay the fire-line from the water main on Main Street into our building so our last REALLY REALLY expensive bit of construction can go in. It's not our last bit of construction by a long bit, but it's our last truly expensive bit, (to the tune of $20,000.)

So now we can put our fire sprinklers in the basement and that will be that. We have a bit of mudding and taping to wrap up in the brewery and then we'll be painting down there. Then the electricians will be doing a bit more work getting our control panel installed as well as our mill connected.

After that our lights and fans will be connected upstairs and you can finally begin to see some of the "after" photographs that make the place look like a brewery and taproom instead of a construction site. The tanks are scheduled to arrive in just under 2 weeks in Portland and we'll have somebody in place to pick them up after they clear customs and inspection.

In no time we'll begin the process of seeing what it takes to become a real boy! And you'll have photos all along the way.

 

[MuddyCreek]

My partners and I are meeting today with the executive director of the Montana Brewer's Association (MBA) at our facility in Butte.

He's coming through town and we are planning on meeting over lunch to talk a bit about some new legislation that is coming up in the next session in the state. In a nutshell there are 50 breweries about to be open in Montana, making us the 2nd largest if not the largest brewing state in the country. This along with some problematic internal issues for the Tavern Association has made for some difficult relationships with the MTA.

Because of some very serious clout in the legislative and lobbying world the MTA has set the bbl limit for MT breweries at 10,000 where they must stop profiting from taproom sales. Furthermore, taprooms can only sell 48 oz of beer per person per day in the taproom and the hours of operation are limited from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Now normally this is no great hindrance to the brewery industry. In fact Montana breweries, as you see have thrived. The atmosphere is conducive to families because the hours are relatively reasonable and since the tap limits are set at 3 pints nobody is sitting around smashed and that makes it a relatively pleasant place to have a couple of pints with your friends.

This all leads to business ultimately being drawn away from taverns, which ironically was exactly the opposite of what they wanted when they set the restrictive rules in the first place. But I digress.

Now the MBA is gaining enough members and enough political and financial backing to gain footing against the MTA. Brewing is the fastest growing economy in the state in terms of revenue and employment. The MTA had to come up with a new method to compete with breweries that would both build their products while weakening the offerings and political power of the MBA.

The new legislation is for "stacking" which will allow both breweries and taverns to carry multiple types of licenses. If it passes a tavern will be able to acquire a brewery license and a brewery would be able to acquire an additional beer/wine license. On the face of it, this solves many problems for both parties. Taverns may brew their own craft beers on premises to provide their own products if they wish. Breweries can increase their hours of operation and their serving capacity with their beer/wine license if they choose to. The larger breweries could open their taprooms and serve their own products at a profit if they choose.

On the face of it, all seems reasonable.

However, the issue lies within the internal issues within the MTA I mentioned earlier. Decades ago in Butte Montana, right where I sit the mining boom drove many industries. Of course one of the the leaders was the tavern industry. Many many tavern licenses were issued in the state all over. Eventually, so many bars were open in the state that legislators became concerned that the state would be seen as too "boozy" and a decision was made to cut off the number of beer wine and liquor licenses. This caused a general state of panic as, of course many entrepreneurs were concerned at the vast amount of money to be made on a booming industry.

In order to assuage concerns another bad decision was made. Beer, wine and liquor licenses were made transferable. They could be moved not only from person to person, but from location to location. This made an instant seller's market from the licenses. Thus a license that was once merely a pittance became a highly valuable commodity. Now, the brewer's licence that costs $650.00 in Missoula County in Montana would not compare to the $500,000 liquor license (Yes, really,) that sells next to it.

And here is the heart of the problem. Based upon availability in some counties a beer/wine license may sell for a relatively reasonable amount. It could go for as little as $1000 for one brewer. However a brewer in an adjacent county could be forced to pay $10,000 or even $25,000 for the same license and that would be a deal. In a county like Missoula, small or mid-sized brewers would have no hope whatsoever to purchase a license as it could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars..

Worse yet, the moment a large-scale brewer (who could actually afford to purchase a license,) got one he would naturally move over into the tavern world where his best interest is in limiting the taproom sales of actual breweries so that Tavern-Breweries can provide actual brewery beer. It becomes the MTA's best interest to further limit the production of brewery taproom sales so that more and more breweries are forced one way or another to somehow scrounge up enough money to purchase a beer/wine license. (Which frankly just isn't possible in most counties.)

The short-term effects of the legislation will be minimal until the MTA gets enough power (with the help of their additional members and the weakening of the MBA from the loss of their previous members,) to pass new legislation to further limit the number of ounces of beer that the brewery can sell from its taproom. This is the logical next step of the MTA. It's what I would do if I were a Brewery/Tavern.

Once that happens, the only way for a small and mid-sized brewery to realistically survive is to become a distribution specific brewery on a small scale and try to work up to large scale production and you all know how hard it is to try to increase your brewing output from say, 20 gallons a month to 80. Good luck with that. All the while making about 1/4 what you used to.

That's what the new MTA and large scale brewers are trying to pass with this new legislation and what the smaller and mid-sized brewers are trying to work on slowing down and discussing before a small panel within the MBA (of course made up of 4 Macro-breweries and 1 Micro-brewery in a small county who can get a $1000 license,) are trying to pass.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Got another working weekend. I'll update with some photos after we get going.

I'm putting together our pilot system this weekend. It will be a 1 bbl E-herms system with propane options under the BK and HLT. We're using 55 gallon SS drums for our kettles. I'll plumb it and test it this weekend and next weekend we'll try a simple batch on it to make sure everything is working properly.

I'm also putting in the ventilation system for our milling room and if I have time I'll put together the prototype for our fermentor stands. Ya. That ought to just about be enough. Meanwhile one of the other partners is putting in conduit from the taproom upstairs so we can run gas lines and ethernet and he'll be activating our P.O.S. system.

The ladies will do the finish sanding in the milling room and the aging room downstairs and if they get far enough along we may just get some primer in those rooms as well.

As I said, photos to come. Monday we have a meeting with the electricians to come in and finish up all the brewery wiring and after that they'll do the taproom wiring. All our brewhaus tanks arriving in customs tomorrow. (Portland.)

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, let's see...

The pilot system is finished except for the HERMs recirc/sparge return line which I'm doing tonight and the final water test. Tomorrow I'm off to get about 150 lbs of grain to store up along with my other stuff and Saturday will see our boil-test. Assuming all goes well - Sunday will be the inaugural brew with the pilot system.

We'll be doing a bbls worth of wheat ale plus enough on the side for a 6th to use for our August tasting. After that I'll brew up a chocolate stout, a blonde and an amber.

The brewhaus tanks should be in by sometime in early August. We could have gotten them earlier but didn't get word from the supplier soon enough to schedule our guy to fly out and pick them up. His work schedule forced him to wait another week or two. So, that's going to suck. In the meantime, we're getting the finishing electrical done in the brewery and doing more work in the tasting room.

I know... Fun for everyone! Everyone! We have our second tasting on the 30th. We had darn near 200 people come to the first so we're hoping to do even better this time. We'll be serving a vanilla porter and our blonde ale along with everyday favorites Root Beer, Lemonade and Ginger Beer.

Last time we had a tasting, the Martini bar that hosted for us did very well so we are hoping to give them a good night again. We've also invited the owners of the local distillery to let them see how our soft-drinks do with their spirits in mixed drinks. We are hoping to set up some accounts with them for the Root Beer, Ginger Beer and Lemonade.

Moving closer to opening. Always closer. I keep saying that so it must be true!

 

[SavoryChef]

Sounds great!!

 

[samandbekah]

This has beena fantastic read Muddy Creek! Good luck with your last final steps...

 

[MuddyCreek]

Ok, since I know we all love us some photos, I have some more for you. Things are finally ready to get a bit more exciting.

We have some promises to keep. One of them was to help the two pubs that share the building (more accurately own the building and rent to us) get tap systems up and running with our beer. In order to do that with the upstairs Martini bar we purchased a Keezer. We got it for a steal. It has 4 taps on it came with all the lines and connectors and a spare 5 lb cylinder. All we have to do is get the local college football team offensive line to lug it up the stairs for us. (I keed, I keed.) No. Really. That may be a good idea. They lug that thing upstairs we host a party for the team... I think a phone call is in order...

Anyway, that's one of our finds from a local consignment shop one of the owner's wives found. We also found a ton of restaurant sinks, tables and other handy stuff that we got at a great price.

We picked up a Nitrogen Generator which we are calling our "Nitrogenator". (My kids watched Phineas and Ferb if yours did too, you'll get the reference.) And we've got our brand new industrial shiny plate chiller which we'll use to turn our 10 bbls of boiling wort into nice cool ready to pitch wort in about 10 or 15 minutes. I have photos of those attached as well.

I have also talked about our marketing decisions to hold "Tasting Parties" to keep our fledgling following involved in our brewery as we are delayed in opening due to our brewhaus holdup. We had our 2nd tasting party last night featuring Storm the Door Vanilla Porter and Dirty Blonde Ale. (Is Dirty Blonde the most original name in the world? No? Is the the most bold beer ever conceived? No? Do 85% of most beer consumers prefer a light blonde ale that pretty much matches a light lager? Yes? Does that drive most of us brewers insane? Yes? Do we still want to make money in this business? Yes? Am I rambling and talking to myself? Yes.)

Anyway, some of the photos below show people at our tasting parties. over the two parties we've averaged about 200 people at each party give or take. Of course that's not hard to achieve given a free tasting. However we've gotten some really good feedback and what I've been most pleased with is that some of the local home-brew guys have come and even the guys who are very experienced and are well educated in their ability to assess beer quality are impressed with our beers. That's been most gratifying.

Finally, we installed and fired up our pilot system last week and brewed a 40 gallon batch of Wheat Ale called Good Time. It was a rough brew day. Things didn't go perfectly but I did get through it. My gravity came in a bit low but if the beer attenuates well things will come through fine. Given this was the first run on the pilot system I'm not going to be too unhappy with it. There are a number of things to correct and some new fittings to purchase and use but overall - we brewed 40 gallons of beer and it's going to turn out. A guy can't complain about that.

For the pilot system we ended up going with Bubba's Barrels. We recreated (essentially) my personal system and a very small and simplified version of our pro system. We're using an Electric HERM system with a BK, HLT and MLT. We are actually using 5500 watt elements in the HLT and the BK and we throw a little propane under the kettles if we need them to speed things up. (We had a miserable first brew day because the elements didn't fire and we were stuck to only propane. Try working with just propane and 50+ gallons of pre-boil wort. That's what makes for a really really LOOOOONG day! Anyway. We got through it and we hit our numbers fairly well.

And now for the really exciting news - our brewhaus tanks, the big ones, have cleared customs and we should have them in our facility by Wednesday or Thursday of next week. I expect it will take us two or three weeks to get them installed and wired up. We are toying with an unusual brewing process. It's a hybrid all electric HERM/RIMS concept. (I'll go into more details when I know it works. If it doesn't I have to go back to the drawing board and do it old school but if it works it's going to be awesome and sort of re-define how a micro-brewery can do things.) It could be way-cool and was made possible through our Walter White partner.

And last, we have a photo of somebody with our first growler sale! We're are provisionally licensed and legal to sell. We just haven't because it's too much work to go through the hassle of tracking barrels and everything. But we had someone last night who BEGGED us to sell her a growler of Dirty Blonde and so we did. There it is. Our first legal sale of beer and as I expected, it's Dirty Blonde Ale. It was a cash sale so we'll have to get one of the dollars out of it and have it framed as well as photographed.

Anyway, without further ado, here's some more eye-candy.

 

[MuddyCreek]

I'm so tired!

I finished our second batch on our pilot system last night. It has been challenging to say the least. It shouldn't be this hard! My HERM coil is entirely too small. I need to come up with a way to suspend my chilling coil inside the BK so I don't have to hold the behemoth myself. (It takes freakin forever to chill 37 gallons of boiling wort btw. Especially in the summer with less than freezing water coming out of your system...)

Nonethess, despite a very long day - I now have almost enough beer for our next 2 festivals in the fermenters. One more weekend out to do it. (I need to make a few more improvements to make next weekend better. A larger HERM coil will help a great deal. I also learned a bit about boil-off on the larger system vs my smaller system. a rolling boil on a 55 gallon barrel doesn't boil off like a rolling boil on a 5 gallon system. So you aren't going to boil off quite as much wort because the surface area isn't the same. IE, I'm finding with my pilot system I need to plan for less in the boil-off and up my Pre-boil gravity accordingly.

Half my delay over the last couple of weekends was trying to hit my target volume and delaying the hops additions to get the boil volume to the right amount. Well - THAT sucked! Now that I have a grip on that issue I think I can shave some time off.

Also, because the barrels are so vertically stacked, it makes heat distribution throughout them pretty darn challenging. But, you live and you learn. It still works, you just have to occasionally get the wort bed distributed and make sure your heat is evenly mixed.

At the end of all the HARD though - I finished with a 37.5 gallon batch of Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout that hit the numbers DEAD on. I was shocked. It came out perfectly. I overpitched by 150% so assuming everything goes well in the fermenter we are going to be ROCKING the Muddy Creek Ale in about 6 weeks.

(Ya we do it Farmhouse Style here. It takes longer, but the beer is so darn good!)

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, 4 days later and the fermenting room is smelling mighty good. We've got a healthy Krausen and we'll be taking our first beer out of the fermenter this weekend and kegging it. (It's off the pilot system so it's only two kegs, but still - exciting stuff.)

This weekend will be spent tidying up the brewery in a very real and legally binding sense. (Name the movie reference!) Why, you ask? Because we are TOLD that Sunday night or Monday morning will be a very very special day in our history and that we should have plenty of clear and accessible space in the brewery. I'll leave it at that.

There shall be more photos. We're getting close now and so you shall start getting more nuts and bolts of the business side. Maybe you don't want that. If not, let me know now and I'll refrain. We're getting into the supplying of grain, hops, yeast, cleaners etc. as well as the long-term management of our keg-rotation. (Remember, we're farmhouse style so we have to manage our brewing and aging schedule very carefully.) Everything is about inventory management. I just heard that one of the new breweries in the state who is also running a 10 bbl system opened up a month or so ago and actually ran out of beer within a week. That's just horrifying. I mean, what the hell are you going to do if you run out of beer in less than a week?

We've done such a good job with our marketing and pre-advertising that we feel like we're going to have a very good opening. I certainly don't want that to become a nightmare. We do have our store open by the way. (No I don't expect you to buy stuff, but you can at least look at the nice online shop template we found and put together.) We need to add some more products, but the interface is pretty as hell.

store.muddycreekbrewery.com (just copy/paste that as your browser link. The html link doesn't like it but it works fine just like that... trust me.)

enjoy!

I'll have some more photos for you this weekend, perhaps even some of us loading our first kegs into the aging room!

Cheers.

 

[Shuznuts]

Dominate dude! Right on. Please indulge us (me) with all the business aspects that you've encountered and practice thus far. Thanks for all this!


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[WilliamSlayer]

This weekend will be spent tidying up the brewery in a very real and legally binding sense. (Name the movie reference!)
Cheers.

Monte Python! Hope that Muddy Creek doesn't have the same problems as that castle. ..... :O

Loving this blog BTW. Please do feel free to pour out your thoughts and details on your supply chain, brewing process, whatever!

 

[plumber_bob]

Monte Python! Hope that Muddy Creek doesn't have the same problems as that castle. ..... :O

Loving this blog BTW. Please do feel free to pour out your thoughts and details on your supply chain, brewing process, whatever!

Heck I don't remember, but it seems like he skimmed through the pilot system set up. I'd like to know more about that too.

I know he's worried about boring us,... but how the hell can you bore a brewer with in depth details about you building a friggin' brewery? Most every brewer's dream/fantasy! Ain't it?

The more I learn about it, the less barriers I may see. Ha! Just like learning to brew,... period. No details, no walls come down. The ignorant will stay ignorant without information. Fear will not be over came without knowledge.

Pb --- yes,... I worked last night and already have had several. lol

 

[82shovel]

I find it very interesting and look forward to the updates

 

[Pickle29]

Please do fill us in on all the business aspects. Couldn't be more excited to hear about them. Also, seriously nice-looking online store. I may have to order me a pint glass or two.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Well, you asked for it...

And yes. I did skip the pilot system details. That did get lost in the mania. So let's cover that, shall we.

At first we were simply going to go with a very small pilot system that would give us access to 5 or 10 gallon batches. (It turns out Rogue uses a tiny little 15 gallon system for their "play batches".) However since we are still waiting for our brewhaus system and we have festivals to prepare for the decision was made to get into a larger pilot system that would help us ease into larger brewing and get some kegs ready for festivals all in one move.

To that end we went with Bubba's Barrels for our pilot system. I essentially mimicked our large system on a 55 gallon scale. We still have an EHerm system, however it's somewhat modified. I have my barrels set up on cinder blocks over propane burners with 5500 watt elements in the BK and the HLT. (55 gallons, really 45 boiling) is alot to expect from a 5500 watt element.) We have realized we have to do the same with our pro system. Our electrician has put some serious restrictions on what we can do with our power in the building so we are ultimately going to be "under-powered" in our electric setup. So what we'll do is pipe some natural gas under the BK. In a bit I will explain our HLT. It's a trip.

Anyway, That's what we're doing for our pilot system. With it I can easily kick out 36 to 40 gallon batches of product which gives me two full kegs and a 6th or a corny as I wish. I can run the pilot system pretty much exactly like we're going to run our pro system which helps me standardize our practices. I'm already starting to learn about how scaling needs to work. I've talked to other brewers, I've tested my equipment and ultimately it comes down to that. You just have to learn your equipment and your processes.

So far I've done three batches on the pilot system. My efficiency has improved each time and it should continue to do so. I'm working on improving specific aspects of the process each time. This week I vastly improved the Herms coil which made my mash WAY more efficient and helped quite a bit. I also fixed my chilling coil issue which gave me time to keg some wheat ale while my Dirty Blonde was chilling. That was nice. I'm still in ghetto mode while I wait on ordering proper transfer hose but, as you guys know - you make do with what you have. We're making do and we're getting the job done. I've got 36 gallons of beer in the cooler and another 36 ready to keg on Thursday. A decent yeast cake ready for my next batch of wheat ale and my most valuable yeast cake ready to be saved off on Thursday, so all in all, I'm happy as a pig in poo.

Now, you may remember that I mentioned that I had to do some cleaning last weekend because we had some important stuff happening... Without further ado -

Now for something completely different.

Photo 1, The Brewhaus tanks arrived Sunday night 8/10
Photo 2, My youngest. She knows where the college fund's comin' from...
Photo 3, After the tanks were wrestled into the basement we got them leveled...
Photo 4, The owners in front of the tanks.
Photo 5, Our first official "filled" keg. Good Time Wheat Ale. (Would be a Belgian Wit but I didn't use that type of yeast. ;-)

 

[MuddyCreek]

And now, the business side...

We went with Country Malt Group for our malting needs. It was really very easy to set up an account with them. Basically you need your Federal Tax Id and a pulse. Fortunately I had both at the time of application. I initially put in an order for all our malt, hops, yeast, and cleanser needs for the next month on our pilot system. This will give us time to assemble our 10 bbl system and get it tested. It only took CMG about a week to get our order to us so in about 2 weeks I will order our first LARGE batch of malt.

Now, our month's supply of pilot system malt and accessories ran us about $1600.00 altogether, I'd say. That gives me 4 batches of beer at about 40 gallons each give or take. Admittedly, I have extra hops as CMG only sells in 11# bags so I have quite a bit extra in some of my hops. However we plan on spending somewhere in the zone of 5k a week on materials alone for brewing when we fire up the big tanks. I'll be forthcoming with you when we actually do start writing the checks so you can have an idea what it really costs to fire up the big tanks.

I also contracted a GF malting company out of Chico CA for a small pilot batch of GF lager malt. We're going to put together two GF beers over the next couple of months and we'll start with a lager and move into an amber as well likely. Now, the GF stuff costs an arm and a leg. Because I only purchased enough for 1 pilot batch shipping KILLED me. But, because I am unfamiliar with GF brewing I don't want to dive in and purchase a ton of malt until I'm really comfortable with it and get some experience under my belt. The entire purchase ran about $350. I'll get about 36 gallons of beer out of that so you can see where that's going to be a very costly beer. As we buy more bulk the shipping will go down, but this is why GF beers cost more than regular beers. They cost ALOT more to brew and they take much more effort as you GF brewers know.

I had to also find a couple other hops suppliers as CMG does not have enough hops to support my habit for all my beers. I found a supplier that has 2 of my missing links but I still need a source for one more Hop. (Amarillo.) Ya. That Damn Amarillo. It's like finding fresh water in the middle of the ocean right now. I only use it for one beer, but it's one the products we expect will be very popular so I need to find a dependable source because right now the only source I have is very very expensive.

So currently I'm finalizing hops contracts with CMG and Sugar Hill. That will take care of my Cascade, Centennial and other needs. I merely need to find an Amarillo fix. We are currently working out a deal with our local (and becoming more famous by the day,) distillery to borrow a couple barrels so we can do some bourbon stouts.

We have also leased a 750 gallon CO2 tank for our carb needs. That should be installed in the next day or two. The gas guys will also handle our taproom gas installation. (Nice of them to take that on. I'll carb the kegs but I'll let them handle the top end pushing of the CO2 and Nitro-mixture through the taps upstairs.)

We had to finalize the payments for the sprinkler guy. Shockingly his original quote did not stand. the 17k he quoted turned into 22k + We have no choice to pay it. We were provisionally licensed a while back and that means you have to be inspected within 90 days. (All work has to be completed by then.) We can't have anybody else quote and do it in time so - there we are. Welcome to another aspect of working with contractors.

We also went back to the bank. We always intended to for operating capital. We hoped to use it you know 'AFTER' we were completely finished with construction etc. but some of the new money will be used finishing stuff up. As they say, always plan for more time and money. Turns out that's absolutely true.

Nonetheless we're closer. We should be open within a couple months now. I need about 1 month to get my big system put together, tested and brewing and another month to ferment and age and then BOOM! we're serving.

More later. I gotta go have lunch with my GC. That's how I roll.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Alright, business aspects... business aspects...

**** you didn't think about 101

Of course this applies to my stuff in Montana, so some of it won't apply for everyone.

Footprint

Floor Drains and Floor Water Flow Management:
Probably the biggest thing I'm kicking myself about right now and that I can't easily fix is my floor drain footprint. We designed our drainage system with our plumber, who has helped with a few breweries in the area and we thought we had a pretty good idea. now that we are starting up with our pilot system I am very quickly learning that I don't have nearly enough drain trough areas to account for my low spots. I have water going places I don't want all the time and I am constantly fighting that.

Since I don't have money right now to do the concrete work I need in order to fix the problem properly I'm making do with sand-bags etc. Before we can do tours and things I'll have to get some self-leveling mix in the basement and then get some better concrete work done to actually route water to my proper drains. In the interim I have learned to place my pilot tanks properly to manage water flow etc. and I know what to do with future concrete curbing etc. to handle water flow but for now, poor pre-planning has caused me a water control issue. So there you have ONE "**** I Didn't Think About"

Tank Placement:

I have a pretty standard offset inline tank placement, the flying V if you will. I have my BK, HLT and MLT lined up with the HLT slightly in front and flanked by the other tanks. Now this is great, except that the way we drew up the rooms in the brewery and turned them in to the Feds (in drawings that have to be inspected and basically have to stand for our license to be approved,) I have the milling room pretty far from my MLT. In fact I have my MLT farthest from the milling room.

This problem I CAN fix. I can simply reverse the order of my tanks. It's just a matter of personal preference. Of course then I come up against that weird voodoo of the brewer. Do I change 12 years of my brewing mojo so I can cut off 12 or 15 feet of auger line from the milling room? It will save me some materials and labor with the auger. I could fix it, I'm not sure I will. We'll see. However If I were to do this all over again I would definitely redesign the brewery to make the milling room MUCH closer to the brewhaus. As it is the milling room is practically across the brewery from our Mash Tun. That would be fine if we were Stone and could justify the distance because we were Golden Gods of brewing, but we haven't (and don't really expect to ever,) grown into that. So, tank placement footprint is ANOTHER **** I Didn't Quite Think Enough About.

Opening Day:

We ordered 96 kegs. We figured that would be enough to open with 4 regular beers along with one of those on Nitrogen as well as CO2. After talking with a few local breweries it became pretty clear that this was a very risky decision. A brewery just 4 hours down the road in a very heavily traveled tourist town (Kalispell,) opened this summer with a 10 bbl brewery like us. They had to close within a week because they ran out of beer. They literally had to lock the doors in the middle of a shift. Talk about a brewer's nightmare. One local brewery in a town about 1/3 our size is serving 2 1/2 bbls a night. This town is about an hour away from us. Another brewery about 5 hours away from us opened 2 weeks ago and is going through 1 1/2 bbls a night. This town has about 1000 people in town. (It is an active logging and popular vacation/tourist town though.)

The point is, these breweries are doing very very well when they open, which is kind of expected. We're in Butte which I pointed out from our research is rated in the top 5 per capita in the country for beer and alcohol consumption in the country. Butte folks like them some beer! We expect we'll open with at least 3 bbls a night, at 6 or more kegs an evening in house and 42 a week going farmhouse style it didn't take long for us to realize 96 kegs was absolutely not going to cut it. Now we're in panic mode to try to figure out how to get more kegs without costing an arm and a leg. We want to pick up at least another 90 or 100 because we'd like to distribute a bit too. (For those of you who don't know what farmhouse means - we keg all our beer and allow it to age naturally for about a month. It tastes better than way than just putting it in the keg, force carbing it and putting it out on the taps in just a few weeks from grain. It will take us 6 weeks from grain to glass, but the results are much much better.) However Farmhouse style requires way way more storage capability. There's some more **** I Didn't Think About.

Keg Cleaning:

With more kegs comes more keg cleaning. We can purchase expensive cleaning systems, and I'm sure we will get around to that eventually, but we're on a budget. After much research we came up with a pretty cool system of our own. You get a really good pump (your transfer pump perhaps,) and few used kegs that you fill up with PBW, and sanitizer of choice. Next you line up three or four of your (hopefully freshly finished kegs) that are ready to be cleaned.

You've got your transfer pump hooked up to a gutted sanke connector. The pump is going to put fluid IN to the "beer out" line of the connector. Because the tap is gutted it's going to allow free flow when the tap is "open". The "gas in" line of the connector is going to be connected to a hose that is connected to the "beer out" line of the next keg. Ultimately you're making a daisy chain that runs fluid INTO the "beer out" line and OUT of the "gas in" line.

First your run super hot rinse water from your HLT into the kegs. once you get the kegs hooked up, you want to turn them upside down on a pre-prepared table that lets you do so and has a hole cut in them for that purpose to let the taps and hoses hang down. Then you turn on the pump with all the valves open appropriately. The water runs through the system, spraying into the kegs and purging them out. Feel free to shake them around with gloves. (They'll get hot.)

Next you can unhook the water from the "Beer IN" line and hook up your Pre-Prepared keg of PBW or whatever you want to wash your kegs with. Then you turn the pump back on and run the PBW through all your kegs. This washes out all the kegs one by one. As your original PBW wash keg runs out you can either switch to CO2 to purge through all the kegs (kinda costly,) or you can switch back to HLT and rinse with water. Then go to your sanitizing solution and run that through. After the sanitizer, switch to water again and run that through unless your final sanitizing step is a "no rinse" type.

At the end, remove all the hoses from the sanke taps, let all the drips and drops drain away. Then you can hook up a regular sanke tap and purge the oxygen with CO2 and you have a perfectly good and ready keg.

The end of the daisy chain returns you to a dump container. (If you're running hot water through, that's your trough drain. If it's your PBW it goes back into a second PBW-storage Keg. If it's one of your other cleaning or sanitizing chemicals it goes into one of those storage kegs. Remember to always use proper gloves, masks and protective clothing when using the chemicals. That **** isn't real safe.)

There you have it, a reasonable, safe keg-washing system that won't cost you an arm and a leg as long as you use proper protective gear and shake the kegs as they're filling and draining. You can increase efficiency by adding kegs to the chain because you're just basically waiting for them to fill up and then drain at the end of the cycle. You just want to keep an eye on the state of your cleaner and sanitizer to see if it's getting funky.

I'll post more **** I didn't think about later. I have to think about some **** I didn't think about earlier.

 

[MuddyCreek]

And today's fun brewing thing of the day...

Paperwork!

You probably thought that you would MAKE BEER if you started a brewery. You thought you'd brew up awesome porters, stouts I.P.A.s and other brews and watch with delight as people quaffed your beer and marveled at the complex pairings of hops and malts and your unique flavor and aroma additions that surprise and delight.

Ya, you may get a few minutes here and there to do that. Maybe.

More likely you'll spend time figuring out where your percentage here or there was off, where you can find just a couple more pounds of hops are, or why your water bill is so damn high even though you've done everything humanly possible to be as conservative and efficient as you can while cleaning, sanitizing, brewing, then kegging. But you will DEFINITELY be working on your Federal Reports.

Each quarter (or each month, as you choose,) you are required to fill out a report detailing precisely how much beer you have produced, how much you have served on premises as well as how much you have distributed. All of this is necessary so you can be taxed appropriately for the product you have produced and sold. Now, this is why brite tanks with sight glasses are so tremendously handy! You can fill up your brite tank, mark on the sight glass where it was filled to and mark where it got down to via serving through the taproom and BOOM you know precisely how much you served in your Tasting Room. You also can mark down precisely how many kegs went out to your distributor etc. how many cans or bottles were filled and where they are in your supply/distribution chain.

Ultimately you have to account for every pint of beer that is brewed in the cycle. The TTB wants to know where that beer is and for every ounce that has been sold by YOU to somebody, you're going to pay a tax. If they find out you've messed up, on purpose on accidentally ~ well, let's not let that happen, shall we?

Paperwork becomes your friend. Tracking invoices, tracking inventory, tracking your brewing schedule, tracking your employee schedules. This is predominantly why running a brewery is a full time job. If all we were doing is brewing and packaging beer it might be something a guy could do part time. Honestly that was (still is,) my plan. I want to try to gap two careers until the brewery is going solid enough that it can truly support me fully so I can just dive over and do it 12 hrs a day as it needs me to. Unfortunately, until the brewery is in a position where it's not sucking funds - We kind of need our day jobs to keep priming the pump as it were.

That means all work and no play and Jack being a dull boy. Our tasting parties make us rock stars, but people don't see all the work that goes into that. Folks continually ask us "When are you going to open already?" It's not like we aren't busting our butt's 24/7 to get the place underway. It's just that the absolutely ridiculous amount of work it takes just to RUN a brewery, much less start one from scratch is pretty daunting.

So, that's another thing you need to be aware of. Brewing is the EASY part! Sure, brewing well is hard! It takes a ton of work and constant dedication to continue learning and pushing yourself to try new things and refine your techniques. But the administrative side of actually going pro is a bitch. There it is. You have to be prepared to do it as a job. So remember, once you're ready to dive in. You need to love this hobby enough to realize that you'll only be brewing about 25% of the time. The rest of your job is divided between Janitor and Pencil Pusher with some Supermarket stock-boy thrown in.

And every now and then you need to put on the ass-hole hat and tell the folks working for you to get back to work. Course that's part of every boss job. You look for good people and find them, but now and then you find the ones that need just a bit of extra training or motivation too.

So - there's another installment of **** you didn't think about...

P.S. I'm in a great mood today. The above post isn't meant to be pissy. It's just stuff you need to think about.

 

[Spartan1979]

What are GF beers?

 

[MedicMang]

.

 

[natnov]

Gluten free

 

[Spartan1979]

Gluten free

Ahh, thanks.

 

[MuddyCreek]

Sorry about that guys!

There's a couple ways to do Gluten Free (as I'm rapidly learning.) The truth is I am NOT a GF pro and I have to work on a couple of recipes, get them right over the next few months (six probably) and get something out there worth serving to people on a large scale.

Now what I have been told and what I've read predominantly is that the use of sorghum is easy, but ultimately the path to ruin. It leaves too many off-flavors and makes the beer have a poor finishing taste. So, after a great deal of research and talking to people, it seems that the best way to avoid bad Gluten Free beer is to bite the bullet and spend some money on it.

To that end I've done that and spent some money on really decent GF malt. I STILL have to work on doing a decent job of brewing it. That won't be a simple walk in the park but I plan on reading and studying quite a bit before I ever even attempt to screw up any Gluten Free beer on a large scale so that I can be confident about what I'm doing. The eventual goal is to come up with a nice clean high-quality Gluten Free beer (which will be a competitive advantage in my community as our other brewers don't do that.) and unfortunately yes, I will have to charge a bit more for it simply because the malt and labor going into the beer is excessive.

But, in time with good products and good marketing, you do well despite a slightly higher price and significantly lower margin. Well, that's the theory anyway. What the heck do I know? I have to do some more paperwork, clean the brewery, clean and sanitize another fermenter and cold-crash some Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout tonight. All that in preparation for my brew session this weekend which features Skinny Cow I.P.A.

And yet, I'm LOVIN' my j.o.b.

Lovin' it like the mailman loves his route on Tuesdays, when you're at work and your wife's at home with her "sexy" bathrobe on.