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.
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.
*Considering the higher-than-average number of Orwell references in our brewery blog, you might be wondering if he's the only author we've heard of. That's not true! There's also Kurt Vonnegut and that wheelchair guy.
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