Filed Under "We'll Have to Wait and See"

Hello friends! We've been keepin' our bad selves busy as always - sawin' and hammerin' so much that our lungs are probably half sawdust and stainin' and polyin' so much that we've forgotten what color our hands originally were, all in the name of tryin' to get things spic and span and spiffed up* for that fateful day when we're finally allowed to brew some dang beer!

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.   

We didn't include a picture of the dirt because we figured there was no possible way you'd need or want to see that. So here's some beer!

*We don't have much by way of in-progress photos this week, partly but not entirely because some recent projects have relied on the phrase "structural duct tape" more than we'd care to admit. 
**They're currently in the "do half the work and then disappear without a trace for several weeks" phase that seems to be fairly prevalent in the contractor community.
***Those aren't actually the words that the planning committee used, but they're surprisingly close.
****We thought otherwise until recently, largely because we had been explicitly told otherwise, but that's really neither here nor there.
*****Assuming, of course, our contractors get their collective shit together. But we covered that already.