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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