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Let's Do it Ourselves, We Said. How Hard Can it Be, We Said.

10/28/2015

Howdily doodily! Come gather around this ol' blog as I ramble about lamps and lumber and so forth. We've been keeping ourselves busy around here, getting ready to really ramp things up once our contractors are done doing their thing (The end is near! They started painting! Admittedly, they did run out of paint halfway through, but it's still a major improvement).

The Bone Up Tap Handle Factory* is still churning along, getting those suckers all polished up and ready for some use and abuse out in the field.

And in the meantime, we've been working on a secret project! Well, OK, it's not so much secret as it is something that didn't seem all that interesting while we were working on it (the in-progress photos would have predominately featured broken glass and yelling). But it's pretty cool now! As part of our exhaustive efforts to create just the right ambiance for the taproom, we've spent a lot of time exploring, discussing, and trying out our various lighting options.** And after exhaustively delving into the details, we ended up displaying a remarkable inability to learn from our own past experiences, saying "let's just make it ourselves! How hard can it be?" And, well, we should know by now that the answer to that question is "harder than we ever expected." But after a whole bunch of trial and error (mostly error) we emerged victorious with a case of sweet-ass growler lamps! Check 'em out!

Now all we need to do is get Jared to stop trying to tell "The Tale of the Haunted Mash Tun"

Don't touch that dial just yet - we have more things to say! You may recall us mentioning our efforts to make the building we inhabit look "less abandoned." Well, we must have done something right*** because now we have neighbors! The cool cats over at Boston Bit Fest have set up shop right next door to us! So now our building has beer and video games covered, all we need is a beef jerky manufacturer and we'll be set.

And in this week's People Are Writing About Us For Some Reason feature: we made it into BostInno's New and Badass Craft Breweries list over the weekend! The list is definitely worth checking out - a few of these up-and-coming establishments are news to us as well. These are exciting times indeed!

Okay here's one more of the lamp c'mon how cool do they look

*Jimbo and Jared, two full-grown adults who still feel like somebody should be supervising their power tool usage.
**We've come across a surprising number of seemingly small details that have required serious thought. Over the past few months we've become temporary experts in light bulbs, security cameras, paint/stain/polyurethane, sandpaper, water heaters, and a whole bunch of other stuff we'd never previously bothered to put much thought into.
***Unlikely.

Giddiness & Impatience Abound

10/21/2015

Alright cats and kittens, here's the scoop: ain't nothin' big happening at this exact moment, but things are getting more real by the day around here. It's about to get so real all up in this place that you won't even know what to do* about it. We still have a couple construction items we're waiting on, but that list is becoming vanishingly short - we're waiting on some odds and/or ends, a coat of paint, and that's about it! Once those loose ends are tied up, we'll have free reign to unleash hell** on that building!

So the mood around here is totally Christmas Morning, except imagine that it's completely early as heck - like it's seven AM but our parents said we couldn't open presents until eight. We're rarin' to go, is what I'm getting at. We have work to do, and we're just itchin' to do it - there's still a bunch we have to do once all these renovations are done (the ventilation system is getting installed soon, we need to get inspections, we need to move all our equipment in, et cetera, et cetera), but we're about to start bustin' our collective hump like you ain't never seen before!

Anyway, since it's not exactly "news" that we're "hopefully opening soon" considering you've already heard that from us one or fifty times over the past few months, check out some drawin's that Jimbo done up!

This doodle might actually beat out the original concept art for the Key Lime label. Tough call.

Beer naps build strong bones, said that doctor that one time.

I'm not even going to explain this one.

*Hopefully what you will do is come to our brewery and completely enjoy the shit out of our beer, but time will tell.
**Paint it nicely and bring in comfortable furniture.

In Which We Break Most of a Wood Shop

10/14/2015

After the dust finally settled from our weekend (and there was certainly enough of it - we produced enough sawdust to make larger-than-life replicas of Jared and Jimbo*), we were left with the shattered remains of what was once a fully functioning vise, a pile of medium-to-very ruined tarpaulin, a few bruised fingertips,** and a heapin' helpin' of some friggin' progress.

Yessir - with an actual end (finally) in sight for our renovations, we realized that we should probably start doing all that stuff on the list entitled "Things To Do Eventually."*** And Do Things we did! We emerged from our weekend a little sore, a little sweaty, and a lot covered with paint, but we're better off for it: we're now much more well versed in the ways of the wood shop (Jared no longer refers to every tool he sees as a "joist," which it turns out isn't even a tool at all), we've got opinions about lumber (we're in favor of it), and we're one hell of a lot closer to being "actually prepared" for that fateful day when we can fire up the kettles and make you some damn beer already!

In the spirit of preparedness, cabinets may come in handy, particularly since these cabinets support the bar top.

Regular readers of this ol' blog may remember our foray into furniture restoration a few weeks back, and this time around Jimbo returned to finish the job! (creating, in the process, the largest cloud of paint and swearing on the east coast) Things still look pretty similar ("like chairs"), so you'll just have to take our word on it that this is a major improvement, but it really is! Check out how good everything looks!

"That was my father's best tarp. He got married on that tarp."

What's more, after some missteps, a couple hiccups, and a tribulation or two, we've started some real-ass production on our tap handles! Each one of these beauties is hand-made (much thanks to Sam Carr for joisting the flanges on the blank handles) and hand-branded**** with our logo (much thanks to Gearheart Industry for making a fantastic branding iron and then being patient with us as we repeatedly failed to use it correctly). So once we unleash our delicious drinkables on this fair city (it'll happen eventually!) keep an eye out for these handsome hunks of wood at your local!

Where the magic happens, also known as "that milk crate table in our basement."

Look at them. LOOK AT THEM.

As an added treat (assuming you think this is as cool as we do, which might not be possible now that I think about it) we got to work on/visit our bar! We unfortunately didn't get to drink beers at it, due largely to the fact that we had to hold it in place as we sat at it, but still! This ol' bar is getting very close to being a real thing that exists, and that's partly***** due to our efforts.

The proud proprietors, prepared to party.

T-Bone: builder of bars, keeper of the wood shop, master of argyle sweaters.

Oh, and One More Thing! We got the opportunity to answer some hilarious questions with the Boston Beer Examiner, and our interview went to press (do you even call it that on the Internet?) this weekend! Normally we'd stretch this nugget o' news out into a whole darned blog post, but Things Actually Happened this week. Either way, you should check it out here. Enjoy!

*Unfortunately, we were unable to successfully build said replicas. Mostly we just got a bunch of sawdust in our shoes/lungs.
**Lesson we probably didn't need to learn the hard way #22: if you've got a chunk of wood that's spinning at 200 RPM, you shouldn't grab it with your bare hands, even if it is "totally spinning in the right direction."
***Subtitled "Let Future Jared & Jimbo Worry About This."
****It's our belief that things can/should look handmade (since they are), but they shouldn't look too handmade. So if you're looking for a tap handle with an unused design concept or some imperfect branding work, we may be able to work something out. And if you're looking for scrap wood with our logo inexpertly branded into it, we've definitely got you covered.
*****Realistically, T-Bone did all the work and we showed up at the next-to-last minute for the photo-op, but we still feel like we accomplished Something Big.

Slightly More Than Nothing, That's All We Ask!

10/7/2015

Howdy ho, camperinos! As always, we're slowly inching towards that fateful day - the day when it will finally be our fault that everything is running behind schedule. True, things may be moving slower than we'd like, but they are still moving! And no, I'm not talking about art this time - after weeks and weeks of things being scheduled for "Monday" (or, if the day in question happened to be a Monday, then "Thursday"), we got us some construction progress!

Now, it ain't much to look at, so we didn't bother with pictures (it seemed like a safe assumption that you already know what concrete looks like*), but rest assured: we got our trench drain finished up and ready to go! Our Construction To Do List is (finally, mercifully) getting shorter, and that's friggin' thrilling (and terrifying)!

But anyway, in lieu of pictures of drains and joists and stuff, we've got something way better for you to look at! Even though this ain't another Taproom Art Week, we didn't want to cut you off cold turkey from the freshest new Horatio** art, so Jimbo whipped up a doodle of him lounging languorously amidst the lupulin. Enjoy!

These hops are long harvested by now, but you can imagine.

*They also removed the rest of that big metal thing (which we may or may not have mentioned at some point). For reasons that aren't especially clear to me, the contractors in charge of removing it originally decided to cut it in half and leave part of it suspended from the ceiling for a month.
**For those of you that are new to the blog, Horatio is our logo character. And if you are new to this blog, then I apologize - the blog isn't generally like this. It's usually far less informative.

Let's Do it Ourselves, We Said. How Hard Can it Be, We Said.

Giddiness & Impatience Abound

In Which We Break Most of a Wood Shop

Slightly More Than Nothing, That's All We Ask!

BUBco Blog

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