Hello hello! It's been one hell of a week around here at Bone Up ("the brewery that's perpetually one step away from opening") - if you'll recall from last week, we'd heard some word from the ABCC about our pouring permit application. Specifically, they told us that we had to redo said application, on account of the fact that we'd been too informative, which was a new one to us. Well, in another unexpected turn of events, we got approval from the state less than twenty four hours later! Holy hell! Way to be, ABCC! This means that we'll be able to serve pints and flights and all that good stuff as soon as we open, so you'll be able to enjoy our beer without having to bring it home first! Exciting times, indeed. We'll raise our glasses to that! Now, to get to the question you're probably (definitely) asking, "that's great and all, but when the hell you gonna open?" That's a good question, and it's one we're also asking on a pretty regular basis. I'll spare you (most of) the rant, but the short version of the story is that we're still dependent on other people to do their work before we're allowed to produce and/or sell beer. We can work ourselves ragged getting everything prettied up and ready to go (and, as a matter of fact, we've been doing just that), but until we can find a way to light a fire under the collective asses of some... less than motivated people, then the beer will remain unbrewed. But we are trying! There's a vanishingly small amount left to be done, and we'll let y'all know the minute we can finally make some dang ol' beer! But enough about that. We're making some big strides over here and that is just heck of excitin'! We're still plowin' through the work on our bar at breakneck* speed and things are really starting to come together! As we predicted last week, the "finishing touches" are on track to take twice as long as it took us to install the damn thing in the first place, but it's completely worth the effort. Check out how good it looks! The taproom in its entirety will remain unrevealed until after we get all up and inspected, so get ready for some creative camera angles. *Moderate
Ahoy hoy! It's been yet another big week down here at Bone Up (no, really! They might let us open soon!) as we continue making serious moves towards gettin' this dang brewery ready! First and foremost, we installed our bar!* And despite the recent moratorium on in-progress construction pictures, we've got photographic proof! We still need to put on a few finishing touches (which will probably, somehow, take longer than the actual bar installation), but it looks so dang good we just had to show you! We were a little worried we wouldn't have anything to trip over once the bar was installed, but as you can see, the giant piles of grain sacks and unassembled bar stools stepped in to save the day. And just think, that'll be you sittin' pretty at that bar in a month or two (or several)! Speaking of things we mentioned last week: we've been busy toiling away in the lab,** working on pilot batches for our inaugural beers.*** We've finally settled on the final recipe (pictured above) for our first batch - it's gonna be a session IPA made with all**** locally-grown ingredients! We've been through a couple test batches and the only problem we've had is keeping it on tap for long enough to write down tasting notes, so we've got a hunch that y'all might enjoy it too! And if you want more info on this beer or our other planned inaugural beers, head on over to the newly-updated beers page! Or you could just click on these here pictures to meet the family. And speaking of things that drive us to drink, we got some feedback from the ABCC on our pouring permit application,***** and the results were... confusing. We knew that they'd received our application (they notified us via their usual method of silently cashing our check), but we weren't expecting to hear anything for a while (the usual processing time is about six weeks). And just when we thought we knew how they operated, we got a prompt call... informing us that we had given them too much information. And so, for reasons too boring to get into, we had to resubmit parts of our application with fewer details. But hey, at least they're working on it! Soon! *Well, mostly.
**OK fine, home brewery. But calling it "the lab" makes me feel so cool. ***"Why aren't you starting with your flagships," you ask? Well, we'll be brewing on equipment that we've never used before, so we'd like to get some things fine-tuned before we start brewing our year-round beers. Those puppies are here to stay, and we don't want to start out by giving you the wrong impression of what they'll taste like. ****Well, mostly. *****It probably bears repeating that we don't need this permit in order to open. But we sure would like to have it, since it will allow us to serve up pints and flights right away instead of only growlers to go. And after all this waiting, it would be great to hit the ground running. Howdy all! We've once again been bustin' our collective hump, turnin' our weird ol' industrial building into something fit to brew and serve beer in! We still ain't got much by way of visual aids on our progress (we're still yet to get the stamp of approval from our friends down in Inspectional Services, which takes some time), but rest assured - we've got some high-quality construction* goin' on and definitely not a bunch of stuff we slapped together from shims and caulk. In other news, we got our first grain delivery! As you may well know, ingredients are the heart and soul of a beer, so we're pleased as punch that we have some! We've never been more excited to be tripping over a bunch of bags of grain. "Made From Ingredients" And speaking of which (not really), our bar is due to be installed this week! We've had most of the components sitting around for a little while, but soon we'll get to see what it looks like in all its splendorous glory! We're looking forward to wistfully staring down the length of the bar, envisioning many happy hours slinging pints across that beautiful chevron surface (also, all the pieces are in our way right now and we'd like to stop bumping into them every dang five seconds). *As the title of this post would suggest, this week's construction theme was "volatile chemicals and combustible materials."
Hello again! We've been busy bees, building away as always, but we gotta lay off the in-progress photos for political/legal reasons.* We know you've all come to know and love** our exhaustively in-depth updates, but we've gotta save it all for the Big Reveal*** once everything is completed and up-to-code! Instead, we'll be showcasing a variety of random images (including, but not limited to, inexperienced spray painting) over the next couple weeks. In brighter news, we've been getting some visits from the nice people down at Inspectional Services! Things are happening (at a rapid pace we didn't realize was possible)! Admittedly, this has involved a fair amount of us learning about previously-unheard-of things that need to be installed to placate the elusive beast that is the Building Code. But more importantly, the fact that we're even getting inspected means that we're actually close to being able to do this thing that we've spent the past two years working towards (make beer for your mouth). So never you fear! We're getting close! And we might actually mean it this time!**** *Trust me, it's a story that's far more long than it is interesting.
**Tolerate ***We know you've all been waiting with bated breath to see what our cold room looks like (spoiler alert: it looks like a box with cold stuff on the inside). ****Well, we mean it every time. This time we might actually be right though. |
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