Hey there cats and kittens! It's been another productive week o' equipment setup around here, also known as "things we're super excited about but which are apparently very very boring to everyone else in the world" (guess how we found that one out). But we are movin' along! Our draft system is rarin' to go, our keg washer is (arguably) operational, and - most importantly - we're just teetering on the cusp* of gettin' our inspections all inspected up, which is the last big step before we get to fire up them kettles! Woo!

Hello friends! Now that we've finally got all our stuff at the brewery, the past week has been a flurry of frenzied activity - settin' up and testin' out our equipment and prettyin' up the taproom and frantically scrambling to order parts that we neglected to order previously.* It's been a hoot!

Why don't you pull up a chair and stay for a spell, 'cause this here blog's got some things to tell! When we last met, we promised/predicted that there would be some big* things happening this week, and it turns out that we were right! For starters, we had some unexpected (and frankly a little confusing) progress on prettyin' up the outside of the building:

​What's more, now that we've (finally) finished (most of) the construction that we need to do, we were able to move the rest of our stuff in! While we did have the major things in place at the brewery (the fermentors and the brewhouse, primarily), a nontrivial portion of our equipment has been in storage** for the better part of a year. But not anymore! Now we get to sort through*** all our hoses and hydrometers and fun brewery toys - it's like Christmas all over again!

While we are still waiting on our contractors to finish up the electrical and plumbing work needed to make our shiny lil' brewhouse operational, we are hell of close to brewin' up a storm. We've never been so happy to be schlepping boxes around!****

Howdy ho, camperinos! It's been a bit of a slow week around here, even by our standards: our contractors have been chippin' away at the work we need them to do* (though unfortunately, progress has slowed considerably** on getting the outside of the building presentable) and we've been plown' through them finishing touches on the bar, but ain't much happenin' other than that. 

Mostly, we took advantage of the lull*** in our schedules to do some (hopefully tax deductible) market research**** in and around one of the best damn beer cities in the country, but we'll spare that particular slideshow for another time. But we've got big plans unfolding in the near future, so be sure to tune in next week when we'll have real-ass progress***** and updates and all kinds of hootenanny! In the meantime, I need to go lie down because all this market research has left me with one hell of a headache. 

And speaking of which, we've had some fairly informative talks with the fine folks down in the building department this week, and - as always - it turned out to be a sort of (completely) unexpected good news/bad news scenario. Now, we're a little light on "hard facts" and "reliable details," but if you'll recall from last week, we're waiting on our contractors to finish up** before we can really spring into action. But... things aren't quite that simple (of course they're not, why would they be). Some of y'all might remember a few months ago that our landlord has a bunch of work to do on the outside of the building in order to make it look "presentable" instead of "abandoned-looking" and "surrounded by piles of debris,"*** and as it so happens, that work needs to be completed before we can open to the public.****

If you're familiar with the... leisurely pace that previous construction projects have taken around here, you'll know that this has the potential to be a largish setback for us (though it certainly wouldn't be the first - we're currently on month eleven of construction-related production delays), but there is a silver lining this time! You'll notice that I said we need this work to be done before we can be "open to the public," which means there's a decent chance we'll be able to start brewing before all the work outside gets done!***** This means that we might need to be distribution-only for a little while, which wasn't exactly the target we were aiming for (as you may have guessed from the ninety five consecutive blog posts about how much we love our taproom), but we ain't gonna let a lil' somethin' like that discourage us! We came here to make beer, and make beer we shall! And besides, we're fairly optimistic that the outside renovations could be ready around the same time we are - progress on the lot is already underway, and we did see a pretty promising-looking pile of construction-grade dirt off to the side. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see.