We brewed our first barrel test batch yesterday. We’ll have more info and pics to come in the coming days, but for now know that everything went mostly smooth. We’ll have a few kinks to work out, but all in all it was a pretty efficient day of brewing.

You can hit the facebook button on the right to see some pics that we posted as we brewed yesterday.

Cheers!

We decided to fabricate our own false bottom. Basically I just ordered a 24″ x 24″ stainless perforated sheet with 0.09375″ holes with a 0.15625″ stagger. After I climbed inside the kettle my wife placed the perforated sheet on top and I used a sharpie to trace the shape of the kettle. Then I cut out the circle with my angle grinder.

The handle and the leg supports will be made out of 0.125″ x 0.75″ stainless flat bar and bent into shape. I cut each support/handle at 10″ and make marks where I want the bend. Placing the flat bar in my vice at the appropriate mark I hit it with a hammer until it has a 90 degree bend.

We are extremely close to our first batches on our 1.3 barrel system. Our kettles have come in and are just getting some final welds done at a shop here in town (Practical Fusion-they’re awesome!). Once we get those back we’ll be installing the heating elements, adding the ball valves, cleaning them up, testing for leaks and any issues, and then firing them up!

It’s going to be pretty crazy to brew a batch that large. The funny thing is most commercial breweries have between 7-30 barrel systems, with the real big boys having 100 barrel brewhouses or more. We’re definitely on the smaller end of that spectrum, however we will proudly be able to say that our beers are truly handcrafted.

Once our brewhouse is functional we’ll be constructing our bottling line and working out the kinks with fermentation and brite tanking. It’s during this phase that we’ll be starting our paperwork with the state and federal agencies. That will take 3-6 months at a minimum (possibly longer). Supposing that goes smoothly and we get our approval we will then begin our commercial production and be hitting the shelves at a bottle shop near you (so long as you live in the Portland area).

Cheers!