We’ve added a new feature to the site…A Store!

Click here to visit our store (or the ‘Store’ tab above) to see our first shirt design and order one up! Since this is a pretty basic virtual store front, the shipping required to pay, although if you want to pay this way and then hook up in the Portland metro area (if you see me around at a bottle share or anywhere else) then I’d be happy to refund the shipping cost to you if we do a personal delivery.

Cheers and thanks for helping support Brewery 26!

Hello,

Been quite a few months since this was updated. Been a busy time! Here’s where we currently in our process to become a licensed nano brewery:

Legal/government process:

We have officially registered as a business in the state of Oregon and are getting things in line to begin our federal and state applications. We hope to have this underway in the next few weeks. The process will likely take 3-6 months. We’re hoping to either be releasing beer to the public in January/February or else April. The state has a $500 license fee that is paid annually. This is not prorated and due in April each year. So if we get approved in March, it won’t really be financially worth it to start up before April. So hopefully the timing of everything works out for us!

System update:

We are continuing to brew trial beers to dial in our process and efficiency levels. We have a functioning (almost) 1.5 barrel system and are fermenting in a 110 gallon conical fermenter. We can brew 2 batches (either in one day or two consecutive days) and come close to filling the fermenter. This has been a huge upgrade for us with faster and cleaner fermentations. Plus its way easier to harvest our yeast to reuse (both for cost as well as efficiency).

From the fermentation side we are now pushing the beer to our other new purchase, a 3 barrel brite tank. This is housed in our walk in cooler (cooled with an AC unit and a Coolbot). This is giving us a faster and cleaner carbonation. We can keg and bottle directly off the brite tank which is much better for consistency and ease of use.

Next steps:

We will be now focusing on our bottling line and a few final upgrades to the brewhouse (in addition to our applications for licensing). As we work toward this we continue to realize the amount of work required and how big of a project this is! We look forward to creating beer for your enjoyment in the very near future!

Cheers!

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!

We just found a deal on kettles and have submitted our order for them. They are shipping out currently and should arrive within a couple weeks. There is still a lot of fabrication to accomplish when they arrive, but we are now another step closer.

Building and setting up a brewery is quite a large task. Especially when we’re doing it all ourselves and without loans or investors. It’s a long process that has already been in full swing for 4-5 months. So here’s where we’re at in regards to our brewery construction. First, I guess we should determine what all we need in total.

Brewing Equipment:

-Control Panel to control the brewing process. We have that!

-Kettles to brew in. We have 1/2 of the money towards that.

-Fermenters. We are planning on getting 2-3 after the brewery is built.

-Bottling line: Will be built during the same time window as we are assembling and acquiring our fermenters.

-Other Misc: Figure it out once we have the other stuff!

As far as the equipment we need to brew, ferment, and bottle, we’re about halfway there from a financial standpoint. As soon as we get our new kettles we really believe things will begin picking up and we can then scale up our recipes for the 1.5 barrel batches and try some commercial “homebrew” sized batches to get everything dialed in. I would imagine we’ll need some “tasters” then for feedback and help getting rid of product!

-Application process: As soon as we finish building the brewery we will begin the process. We anticipate this stage beginning shortly after the first of the new year.

All in all we plan and hope to be in production and ready to begin bringing delicious beer to you in the summer of 2014 supposing everything works out. I would imagine that we’ll have a hiccup or two along the way but we’ll be sure to keep our updates posted here.

Cheers!