Making Progress and Progressing Swiftly…Whatever that means.

We’ve been working, I swear! That’s actually why this blog, our facebook and our deliveries have been slower paced recently. A brief catch up on our progress and then onto the photos.

Our fermentation and brite tank glycol line is up and ready for the chiller to arrive, Once the unit is in place, we can run the brewhouse lines. Though we were indeed able to put together the CoolFit glycol system (thus far) without much help; it was most definitely not the “plug and play” or “easy to install” system that we were lead to believe. All in all, we’re happy but it took a bit longer than anticipated.

Our fermentation tanks and brite tanks are back in line and bolted and welded down. We just need to bend the bolts and trim them down to the nut for asthetic reasons…then done!

Our “Warrior” kettle has returned with a new stainless steel panel and door for easy repairs. The brewhouse has been reassembled and we’re now considering how to hard plumb it. Copper or Pex?

Our cold storage will be broken down and reassembled in the new facility on Thursday! That’s pretty exciting. We’ll be moving our inventory to Torrance, so no more long drives to Santa Ana to retrieve kegs for delivery. Both Porter and I are cheering!

Check out some of our progress!

The Tanks

Ducks in a Row

Bolted and Welded in Place

Glycol Lines with Drops in Place

The Kettle and our New Panel

Hey, We have a Scissor Lift! Why not use it for photos?!

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Now That’s A Brewery!

Yesterday we received our fermentation and brite tanks. It was a long day full of excitement and chest crunching fear (mainly when we tilted up each and EVERY tank). We’ve been so excited for this day to come but truth be told, we were completely unprepared for the mammoth undertaking of removing and placing the tanks by ourselves. Lucky for us, our karma is strong and we were saved by Ryan and his father, Harvey- two master riggers. YAY!

To save room for photos, I’ll spare you a more wordy description of the day. These photos do a pretty good job of telling our story.

Happy Brewer

The truck driver forgot to break the seal…luckily we’re industrious here at Smog City

WOW!!

Removal of the first tank, a 30bbl fermentor

Tipping up the 60bbl, eek…

Placing our largest tank, the 60bbl fermentor…it only weighed in at a modest 3500lbs.

Tanks are coming in and lining up.

Porter takes a moment.

We loaded in from 2pm until 7pm. A beautiful night to be receiving our tanks.

Up goes the 30bbl brite tank

Placing the brite

Last tank, the 15bbl brite.

15bbl brite

We barely cleared the door!

Wrangling our last tank!

Porter places a foot pad

Almost done!

All our ducks in a row. Beautiful!

Porter inspects his fermentors

Help from the indispensable Dan Bolton of Bolton Engineering.

Porter couldn’t help himself.

With the tanks now in place, and our ABC and TTB applications APPROVED, we move on to running the glycol lines and cleaning the brewhouse before reassembly. Unfortunately, we recently got word that our kettle needs a little TLC. So off it will go on Monday or Tuesday for a little work. We’re hoping it comes back quickly!

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