Remember a few weeks ago when we said that our new floors had been scheduled for "next week" for several months? And it seemed like we were doomed to be stuck in Construction Limbo? Well the concrete has finally been poured!** Apparently writing a sassy blog post is all it takes to make some progress around here (it worked with the TTB too, somehow). We're still a ways away from being done with our buildout,*** but this is far and away the biggest single item that needed to be accomplished. More importantly, it was a bottleneck that was preventing other work from being done (finishing the plumbing, hooking up gas to the brewhouse, setting up proper ventilation, etc.), so now there's a bunch of stuff that will (hopefully) start moving along much faster. Anyway, check out our kickass new floors!

Well hey there, cats and kittens! Round about now we're celebrating something of an anniversary here at Bone Up Headquarters. That's right! This week marks the one-year anniversary of this here blog! And, somehow, it originally managed to be even less chock full o' news than it is now. 

Since we spent our Weekly Blog Ramblin' Times last week talking about the way ahead (and since there's nothing new to report on that front except that our new floor is - for real this time - going in this week. Supposedly. Maybe), we figured we'd spend a little time looking back. 

Now, it might not seem like a lot has gotten done in this past year, but we've been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that, frankly, isn't very interesting. 

For instance: after spending several months looking at potential spaces, we found one that we thought would work (the one we're in now, in fact). But before we could even think about signing the lease, we had to get the zoning for the building modified. And that meant meeting with a handful of people in City Hall (no easy task, considering we had day jobs) and - of course - filling out paperwork. Once our paperwork got rejected,* we had to schedule a hearing with the zoning committee, which only meets every four weeks. Our first hearing was cancelled because not enough people on the committee showed up (in their defense, it was pretty nice out that day). That almost happened at the next hearing, but that one was merely delayed... until somebody could go get the only missing committee member they could get in touch with... the one who was recovering from eye surgery (he couldn't drive himself in because he had to wear dark sunglasses at all times). 

Riveting story, right? Now take that story and stretch it out over fifteen weeks or so, and it becomes substantially less gripping. That pretty much sums up our lives at the time. 

But seriously, we've had one hell of a year: this time last year, we didn't have our lease signed, we didn't have any of our brewing equipment (nor any of the handsome and elegant merchandise available in our very own shop!), and our impending TTB paperwork was just some gremlin looming off in the distance. Hell, our company didn't even have the same name at that time. So it's been a hectic year for us here at headquarters, and Jimbo put together this great infographic to illustrate our biggest milestones (both past and future):

Just as importantly, we've encountered a lot of great people over the past year. And we'd like to thank everyone who's given us support, information, advice, encouragement, and hops knows what else. We're lucky to know as many fantastic people as we do, and we're excited to join an industry with so many people that look out for each other and help each other out. 

We'd also like to thank you, dear reader, for reading this ridiculous blog (and, where applicable, giving us feedback**). We know you could be doing a lot of things with your time other than reading the news page for a brewery that doesn't exist yet, and we do try to make things at least a little entertaining because of that, but even so we really appreciate you checking back here every week. 

*Yes, it was a required part of the process to submit an application for the express purpose of having it rejected. No, I don't know why.

**Admittedly, a lot of the reactions we've been getting to the site have been along the lines of "... you guys are weird." And that's cool too. Ain't no law sayin' how high you gotta let your freak flag fly.

The one question we've been hearing most often (i.e. whenever we talk to anyone) is "when are you gonna open?" And of course our usual answer is "That's a good question!" followed by mumbling something about an important dentist appointment and briskly striding out of the room. But we hear it often enough that we figured it would make sense to answer it here so that we have a written explanation of how and why we have no idea.

First things first - we've been telling people that we're hoping to open in June. And while we are technically still hoping to open in June, the odds of that actually happening have slid from "optimistic but not unrealistic" down to "hilariously improbable."  It's still looking like we'll be able to get up and running this summer, but at the moment we're being held back by two separate-but-related things: government approval and buildout. 

Government Approval
As we've mentioned previously, our state-level brewer application has been filed with the ABCC (the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission - it sounds so formidable! So Orwellian!*). We don't have any sort of timeline for when that will be issued, but they've at least contacted us to request a wide variety of moderately insane supplemental information (bank statements from our lenders, an authorization form that isn't mentioned in the application or anywhere else on their website, a new copy of the floor plan that they lost, etc.), so we know that things are more-or-less progressing on that front. We also need to get seventy different town level approvals, but many of those depend on...

Buildout
There are some building improvements that we strongly prefer to finish before we start brewing (turns out it's really hard to redo the floors if you have five hundred gallons of wort and/or beer sitting on those floors). Now, if any of you out there have experience dealing with contractors, you know full well that it can be a bit... frustrating. That floor redo we talked about has been scheduled for "next week" since February, and there are a lot of things we can't do until that's done. But that is dependent on the successful completion of our plumbing, which has been hovering at 60% done since that time we got all excited about it, and... well, you get the idea.

Sorry to get you all amped up for some non-news, but "I have no damn idea" is the best answer we've got for the question of "when will you open" (also acceptable: "hopefully soon"). We sure would like to have a real answer for you, but most of this is out of our hands for now, so all we can do is wait.

It was recently brought to our attention that one of our merch suppliers (specifically, the people we got our awesome tulip glasses from, who we'll be working with much more in the future) was having a contest. If you don't feel like clicking through and/or reading that whole flyer, the gist is that they want to hear the stories behind new breweries, with some focus on community involvement, branding, and/or marketing (which makes sense, considering what their company does). And so, in typical Bone Up style, we decided to make them regret assigning points for originality. 

But seriously though, we had fun writing our contest submission, and we thought you might have fun reading it. Much of it will sound pretty familiar to regular readers of our blog (both of you), but here it is anyway for your reading pleasure (bonus points if you can spot the moment in the narrative when we said "to hell with it, we're not gonna win anyway. We might as well enjoy writing it").