Unveiling my brewery & garage build

[fall-line]

uh, have you seen where he's from?

haha. that was my first thought when I read that post as well. However, we actually do get a ton of sun here in the summer. Our lawns grow like crazy in the spring and early summer with the combination of rain and sun we get, but from July - September, Seattle is actually drier than most cities in the US. You see a lot of brown lawns.

I think this year, I'll need to water it a bit more than usual to help it's recovery.

 

[tom_gamer]

Down here in Texas you have to water daily if you don't want your lawn to end up as dirt.

 

[freelunch]

Down here in Texas you have to water daily if you don't want your lawn to end up as dirt.

Nonsense. El Paso is about the only place that needs watering twice a week. Just about anywhere in Texas East of Midland can get away with less often than that.

 

[tom_gamer]

Nonsense. El Paso is about the only place that needs watering twice a week. Just about anywhere in Texas East of Midland can get away with less often than that.

I call BS. I live in Houston and you need to water basically daily in the summer heat if you don't want you lawn to die.

 

[glenn514]

I lived in Plano for five years. The automatic sprinklers went on every other day to keep the "expansive clay" moist. If it dried out, the house foundation could crack. And that St. Augustine grass...the hotter it was, and the more you watered, the more it grew! Kinda reminds me of "crab grass" up here in the north!

glenn514

 

[mrklueber]

Just finished reading the whole post. Great job. Very envious of your space. Good luck with your brewing and projects. Keep us posted as you automate your brewery.

 

[rdann87]

Wow... Just read all 28 pages. Impressive to say the least.

 

[fall-line]

Just finished reading the whole post. Great job. Very envious of your space. Good luck with your brewing and projects. Keep us posted as you automate your brewery.

Wow... Just read all 28 pages. Impressive to say the least.

Thanks! I've re-read the thread start to finish a couple of times through this journey, it's a nice reminder of (most of) the steps along the way.

 

[fall-line]

For all you Texas folk that think your lawns have it bad. Here is the monthly and seasonal rainfall comparison for our cities. We get lots of rain pretty much all year and the species of grass the survives in the wet best here does not tollerate drought well at all. As you can see though, we get quite a bit less rain than most places (even in Texas) during July-September. I assume this is due to the fact that you get semi-regular thunderstorms, but everywhere is a little different. We get maybe one or two thunderstorms a year. Summer rain is a rare treat.

http://average-rainfall-cities.findthedata.org/compare/244-247-249-268/Dallas-fort-Worth-vs-El-Paso-vs-Houston-vs-Seattle-Sea-tac-Ap

It's not uncommon for folks in Seattle to water their lawns 2-3x a day during this period. I've found that if I don't water at least once a day it'll be brown and dusty by the end of July.

Usually, we just let it happen and save our water for the garden, which needs it even worse. This year, I think the lawn will get some more love to help it bounce back.

I'm looking forward to having those two large ran cisterns filled up for watering the garden, but unfortunately the 620 gallons won't be anywhere near enough to carry us through the summer. Best estimates are that we will need close to 4000 gallons.

 

[fall-line]

I was happy to be able to take advantage of the long weekend and some nice weather to get the arbor started along with my trusty contractor. Working with this beautiful cedar was a nice change from the composite material we used on the deck.

Sanding, shaping, and staining the beam.

Lifted it into place

Detail

Rear posts are in, starting on the rails and rafters. (low light at the end of the day)

I also got some work done on the brewing rig. I'll get those photos pulled together and post them a bit later.

 

[Schemy]

Pretty sweet.

 

[MaltMonster]

there should be a "like this thread" button, liking each of the OP's individual posts just won't cut it

You can always hit the "Prost this thread" button at the top right of the thread on each page.

 

[MaltMonster]

Is it summer yet? I'm almost ready! As I mentioned before I've been avoiding spamming the this thread with non beer related updates, but I'm happy to report that the decking is done. Moving along now to the railings and the arbor, painting the fence, and building the outdoor kitchen.

Meanwhile I'm happy to say that the brewing continues, with an IIPA, Maibock, Moose Drool, 'Island Lager', home grown apfelwein, and a Pale in various stages of fermenting or consuming. We're looking forward to the brewery warming party in March!

The design has changed a little from the original sketches, but it's pretty cool to once again see my drawings coming together in real life as they did with the building itself.

I love that you were able to connect the deck between the house and the brewery. Look forward to seeing some hops growing on the arbor this Spring.

 

[fall-line]

Thanks, all.

Yeah, tying the two spaces together on one level was an important goal of the project. Before any of this got started we had a small deck off the house, then a step down to a shorter deck, then a step down to a patio, then three big steps UP to the slab where the garage now sits. I'm still a little sensitive about how large we had to make the deck in order to accomplish a single level without it being super skinny like a bowling alley, but I'm really glad to be able to walk from the house to the brewery in one easy motion now.

Better yet, as long as it's not raining, I can do it in my slippers.

 

[fall-line]

The arbor is almost done. We're going to add 4 more rafters to it so the spacing is a little narrower. These aren't nailed down just yet, as evidenced by the one on it's side over the door. I'm pretty excited about how it's turning out though!

 

[TyTanium]

What an awesome area for entertaining!

 

[rockinmarty]

Dude can we switch. I'll give you snow and freezing cold in exchange to what you have. Posting pictures in February that looks like spring is evil for us on the east coast.:rockin: Great build.

 

[fall-line]

Thanks!

It's true, we did have a couple of nice days here, for February anyway. I'm glad we were able to take advantage of them. It's back to cold and wet today though.

 

[fall-line]

I also put some work into the brewery this weekend in advance of a 10 gallon batch I brewed last night. I finally found the motivation to clean/polish/cut/drill my final keggle. I'm not sure why I waited so long with this keg sitting in storage for several months. It's so much nicer than using my old pot as the HLT.

Pardon the mess, as you can see we are still in full 'construction zone' mode in the shop in support of the outdoor projects.

Detailed conversion pics of the other kegs are earlier in this thread, so I'll skip the details and just show the before & after.

And the aforementioned 10 gallons (bottom shelf) nice and snug for fermenting

 

[rockinmarty]

lucky you here it's cold with blowing snow.
Great polishing job on your keggles.
What did you brew it looks tasty

 

[fall-line]

That would be my slightly altered version of Yooper's AG Dead Guy clone. It's one of our house standards, and always seems to disappear before I can replenish it when doing 5 gallon batches. Our friends (and us too) just cant get enough of the stuff.

Big props to Yooper, once again. She has been either the direct source of, or the inspiration for several of my favorite recipes. Of course, that's no surprise to many HBT readers.

 

[BeardedIdiot]

Damn good job polishing that keg! I just picked up two more kegs, and I want to polish them and my original keg up like that. What grinder pads are you using to get that kind of result?

 

[fall-line]

I followed Bobby M's polishing steps on this last one to the letter. Here is his exellent writeup on the subject .

I really took my time on this one, after ending up with less than ideal results on the other two by taking shortcuts. I don't really need polished kegs, but what the hell.

 

[fall-line]

Very minor update, I didn't like how far apart the rafters were on the arbor, so we put up some more. I also set a hard deadline of the end of February (one week from today) for all of this work to be D.O.N.E, and to start cleaning up my garage/brewery for full production mode. It's an easily attainable deadline, but a cheap one considering that the original plan was to have this done by the end of 2012.

 

[TyTanium]

Rafters look much better. Fantastic!

 

[MaltMonster]

I just realized that your grill is next to the brewery instead of the house. Love it!

 

[fall-line]

Definitely. The grill is in the area being built out today with an L shaped counter/cabinet, which will become our "outdoor kitchen". Pretty basic, but there will be a grill, sink with H+C, and electrical. I thought about putting in a fridge, but there will be plenty in the building itself. Plus we are still planning to one day put a tap through the wall between the door and the window for outdoor 'lawnmower beer' in the summer time.

We really wanted to create an outdoor living and entertaining space with this project. It's making me really wish it was spring!

 

[ScotBrew]

You putting some sort of roof on the arbor or you keeping it open and more natural looking?

 

[Oldskooler]

Really nice work.

 

[fall-line]

You putting some sort of roof on the arbor or you keeping it open and more natural looking?

Sort of. I'm not totally sure how well it will work out, but the plan is to put a sheet of plexiglass down on top of the rafters, but just over the kitchen area. It was built with a very gentle slope away from the garage to encourage rain roll off of it. The rest of it will be open to better facilitate the growing of hops.

This plan may evolve over time, but the idea is just to keep the grill/counter/etc out of the direct rain.