Thursday, February 25, 2010

ABC License Approval

Wow, finally after many phone call and meetings, we finally have our active ABC license. We acquired two license types: type 23: small beer manufacture, and type 17: beer and wine wholesaler. We decided to acquire the type 17 because of many discussions with various brewpubs (which have a type 75 license) that want to try to get their brews outside of their establishments. The type 23 license is needed to brew and sell the beer that you brew. What a great way to start the day today!

Monday, February 22, 2010

Health Department meeting

Today we met with the Health Department. The meeting went better than expected. It was basically a consultation meeting with only a few changes that needed to be implemented onto our plans and into the brewery. I guess the phrase of the meeting was "washable surfaces". Our base coving will have to change from the standard rubber cove to a topset ceramic cove throughout the tasting room, mill room and janitor closet. In our brewhouse area, the Dur-a-Flex flooring, which will be installed by our friends at Lennova, will take care of all the necessary coving in the area. The health department initially wanted us to enclose our brewhouse area completely, with wall that extended to the ceiling (or drop down ceiling). This would have been a huge investment. We settled on maintaining our current 10 foot wall but we will have to have a washable surface adhered to the ceiling above the brewhouse area. We will be installing tile floors and ceramic tile coving in the restrooms and our storage/supply room. We will also have to replace the ceiling tiles in the storage/supply room to washable ceiling tiles. We are headed to San Diego tomorrow so that our Architect can look at all of the comments that the city has made on our initial submitted plans. With any luck we can have the revised plans back to the city by the week's end so we can get this construction going.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Silo






We picked up a silo from Mark at Craftsman Brewing Company yesterday. We decided that we could rent a Budget truck for the pickup and delivery of the silo. When we arrived (the truck rental was in the same storage yard as the silo...great luck) at the rental yard, the only 0ne-way truck they had available was a 16' truck. We thought this would work if we would just not close the rollup door and have a portion of the silo hanging out the back. Though this sounded kind of scary, we decided to try it. After getting all of the paperwork signed and keys to the truck, we did a quick measurement of the box and realized that the silo would not fit. Thankfully the guy at the rental company found a 24' truck available in Glendale. He called to have it delivered, which took an hour, then off to loading the silo we went. The 24' foot truck worked perfectly for the load and delivery of our new (well actually used) silo.
We had talked to Mark who gave us some history on the silo. It had originally belonged to Vinnie Cilurzo when he was running operations in Temecula with Bling Pig Brewery, which to us is pretty cool, not only for nostalgia reasons, but because of the awesome brews that Vinnie and his group puts out.