Sunday 23 December 2012

Week 8 Build Pictures

The blog is a bit late this week. Unfortunately, due to my day job, I have not been able to spend much time at the unit. But Gregg and Mike, as always, have stepped up to the plate and made some moves forward. I did manage to get to the unit last night though, to check things for myself and get the weeks photos.

On Tuesday Mike and Gregg hired a van and spent a long day on the road picking up various pieces of equipment. They picked up our labeller, rotary tables, some catering sinks and some fridge freezers. Big thanks to Mike, it couldn’t have been easy driving that big van around the streets of London.  


We had a little day trip to Charles Faram up near Worcester on Wednesday. We had met Will Rogers at an event in London before and decided to visit the guys to talk hops. Will was kind enough to show us around the operation, and then spend a good few hours with us talking us through some new hops, and smelling a wide selection of stock. We then loaded the car with 85Kg of their beautiful product, a few bags of grain, yeast and headed off home in the rain. Huge thanks to Gregg for doing the driving for this, it was a long way and very wet.

We are still waiting for the brew house to be delivered, but a few things did show up on our doorstep. Mostly small plumbing bits for the hot and cold liquor tanks, which Mike has made a start on. We took delivery of an IBC (intermediate bulk container), which will be position on the mezzanine above our 8 head bottle filler, where we can gravity fill our bottles. But probably the most important delivery this week was from a unit just opposite ours. The safety railing and pallet gate for the mezzanine was delivered, installed and painted. This now means the mezzanine is officially safe, and we can have visitors come up to the office area.

So, to this week’s pictures.



In the first couple of pictures, taken from outside looking into the unit, you can see that the two fermenters made it down from the mezzanine without the crates disintegrating. To be honest I’m kind of glad to have not been around for this, as the worry may well have been too much. Just behind the crates you can see the labeller and rotary tables, which need to be set up and tested. You can also see the safety railing in its full glory.

The above picture is taken from inside the pallet gate, which allows us to safely load pallets into the mezzanine. Not much has changed in the main brewery area. You can see the 2 crates, but these will hopefully be unpacked soon and the fermenters moved out back. There is now an emergency exit sign above the door. We are all about the health and safety this week.



The mezzanine office area is looking surprisingly cluttered again, considering the 2 500Kg crates have been removed. This is partly due to everything needing to be moved away for the installation and painting of the safety railings. It also has a lot to do with the liquor tanks. There are a number of boxes of pipes and fittings, and Mike has the lid off one of the tanks and has started the process of plumbing them in. There is a large IBC sat waiting to be positioned when the liquor tanks are ready.


Again I have taken the picture in the back room looking towards the WC, as there is far more to see. There are a couple of fridge freezers, for storage of hops and yeast. There are a couple of catering sinks, one to go on the wall in the back room and one in the main brewery area. There are also a few bags of grain and lots of lovely hops. You should be able to see some tape on the floor too. This is to mark out where 2 of the fermenters are going to live, with the other 2 to the right of where I was stood to take the picture.

Well that’s all for this week. We won’t be taking this next week off, as we are eager to get everything ready and up & running as soon as we can, so we can start making beer, which is what this is actually all about. Hopefully the brew house will be arriving this week too.

I guess there is not much more to say other than, have a great Christmas, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you’re not, just enjoy not being at work, and have a beer.

All views and grammatical errors are that of WeirdBeardBryan, and not the Weird Beard collective.

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