So this thing is outdated. How has the time gone so quickly? Most likely if you’ve checked this site in the last year you figured we threw in the towel…nope. Just got delayed a bit. So here’s where things are as of right now, June 22, 2016…

In the last month we have filed our applications with the city, state, and federal agencies involved in order to get our brewery license. This portion took us a while as we have moved the brewery yet again (due to having to move, yet again). However it is in it’s final location (until we can afford a taphouse/brewery commercial location). The licensing process takes roughly 3-4 months, so we hope to be licensed and producing beer around October or so.

We are finalizing the details on our system. Assembling the bottling line, welding new stands, building out the walk-in cooler and fermentation areas and other miscellaneous aspects that will need to happen in order to get beer in your glass.

As we get closer to our launch date, we’ll update this more often. Until then stay connected with Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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.