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Well, the school gods have allowed me more time away from the small screaming children once again. This year it means getting down to business with my main focus the basement. Since my last post, I have logged many hours of research on how to get FRP wall installed correctly as well as how to to build farmhouse tables. We will see how my homework paid off.
I did get my walls installed, which meant getting all the electrical and plumbing completed, tested and working; also entailing baseboard and trim work to clean up my edges. Just tonight I finally brought the giant sink in from the garage to the brewery, I am sure my wife is thrilled. And also began work on the bar top, rollable table/bar, and glass storage.
After putting up my baseboard and finishing out the walls this morning I took a trip out and found some stainless steel shelving. I spent so many hours pouring over reviews of these online that I decided to go to a restaurant supply shop to purchase them. I was so afraid of the shitty reviews of them online that I wanted a face to put to them so if I had a problem that I could take them back. In retrospect, this was an amazing adventure into a world that I don’t often see. All sorts of parts and pieces of equipment that reminded me of my early 20’s working in kitchens. In a small way, I wanted to get a giant 208v Hobart mixer and a flat top and grill to really make my “commercial kitchen” complete. I was super pumped when I saw how much the asking price was for a 3 basin commercial dish station, well over $1000, made my purchase of one so much sweeter. This adventure really was about stainless shelving and after 3 stops I had 3 pieces that would work for me. So off to home to move the dish station with the neighbor.
The bar top and table I am working on at the moment have gained focus over the last day and a half. I am waiting on a lot of hardware to show up to complete the project. No need for a rush on this, I have something like 9 more coats of urethane to throw on top of these bad boys before they are ready for service. They are made of 2″x 10″ pine. After screwing and gluing them together I torched them up a bit with the Harbor Freight weed burner to give them some of the “so sugi ban” flavor and then began to urethane them. I do have concerns about how well they will hold up over time to abusive guests and their drunken ways, but honestly, my budget wouldn’t allow for some wood higher up on the Janka hardwood scale. We will see, I think I may have shelled out $60 for all of the wood, not bad at all in my eyes; I am hoping the Varthane I am coating it with will prove to be worthy.
So stay tuned. I am hoping for another banner week next week we well as sometime this Father’s Day weekend. As long as I can keep that job stuff at bay here in June I will be tearing it up here at home. Just hoping to maintain the speed of this week.
I am impressed with your energy. You are really cranking out some work. Looking forward to the open house to introduce the brewery.
Wow… looking awesome Evan. Love that nice stainless sink, and of course I’m a sucker for fine woodworking. At this pace, you’ll be brewing in no time!
Chuck, yes I for sure looked into epoxy counters/bar tops. For probably a little to long I was obsessed with watching they guys over at Stone Coat Countertops making all the crazy things that they do with Epoxy.
I ended up going with wood because I needed something to warm up the room. With so much stainless, FRP, and epoxy already in the room, I wanted some natural materials to offset these colder type materials. Maybe one day I will get around to playing with epoxy like those guys do in their fancy youtube videos but for now, I needed simple executable actions and a little less experimentation.
Well here is the update I meant to write over a week ago. Somehow the summer weather starting and the need to be outside and doing things like camping and pressure washing the driveway have gotten in my way of kicking huge amounts of ass in the brewery building.
Most of the brewery room itself is complete. I have gotten a bar top completed as well as the install of the sink, dishwasher, tv, chest freezers, refrigerators, shelving and trim work completed. So enjoying a beer down in the brewery can now happen. What cant happen yet is brewing as I step into the vast unknown of the building of what is probably the most complex electrical machine I will ever build.
Before I get too far into the update I will add a bit to the story. When I originally planned on starting this brewery was about 3 years ago. I am sure many guys in the club will remember me talking about going all electric very soon back then. What happened is my job at work changed, my son got older and needed much more attention, my wife switched jobs as well as I discovered the need to completely gut and refinish a 20′ trailer. So back when I was doing a lot of graphic design work on the side I would take that extra change and slowly accumulate parts for this build. Even as short of a window of 3 years ago was there wasn’t really any off the shelf electrical brew systems that a guy could just go buy without going into the expensive pilot systems. I became obsessed with Kal and his system over at the Electic Brewery and dreamed of the day I would have something similar. So I acquired many of the parts and then even designed my own 60 amp 3 element brew panel. The sad part was this project was shelved but not forgotten.
It wasn’t until I got a hair up my ass and found some free time did I start taking the steps necessary to make this project happen. I realized I would do so much better if I redid my entire brew room and not just parts of it. As well as realizing that this was a much bigger project than I ever projected. It really was when I found the deal on my sink that I realized I had so much shit sitting in my basement and garage that I really needed to get my ass to work.
So in the last week, I have opened all of the boxes of parts and pieces and had to make sense of the hairbrained idea I had laid out years ago. I will tell you I have had more than one evening sipping on beers in the new brewery trying to reverse engineer my brain from 3 years ago and understand what the fuck all these parts meant to me. Thank god I had some logic to save about 3 scraps of paper with diagrams that helped me decode the disaster of parts I had accumulated. So as you will see in the following photos I crossed one hurdle with the room only to reach another hurdle with designing and building an electric brewery. But, really, this is my favorite type of project one that I am puzzled by and have to push myself into understanding.
Wow your brewery is coming together really well! Love the rolling bar.
Cheers
Serving: Brooks Irish Red 4.8% ABV
Serving: Robert's IPA
Fermenting: We Are The Dreamer of Dreams (NEIPA)
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