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!

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.

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.

Build-Out Plans

We submitted our plans to the city last Thursday. The timeline for the plans to be back in our possession is 10 days from submittal. We are hoping that there is not going to be too many changes needed to the plans. Since this is a new venture into the city, things could get tricky. The many changes and details that were made to the plans prior to submittal should help with the process. The timing of the build-out plans, Health Department plans and ABC license seems to be on a collision course. They should all be approved within two weeks of each other. It is funny that even though I read various blogs and talked to many brewers, the timeline for the opening seems to be what everybody mentioned. "Take your projected opening date and add five to six months to that". Our initial opening date was sometime in September 2009. It looks like we are in-line to open in the month of March 2010. With much luck, it will be worth the wait.

ABC paperwork

OK, I believe that the Alcohol Beverage Control finally has all of our paperwork in order. The next step is for the paperwork to be reviewed by a supervising agent. If the paperwork is still in order after that step then it is sent up to Sacramento for one last review and approval of the license...two in our case. Even though the process was tedious and lengthy, the agent that we worked with was quite pleasant and insightful. She put up with all of our questions (which were many), responded quickly to our inquiries and kept the communication lanes open throughout. We can only hope that all of the paperwork will pass seamlessly through the next step.

We put the final touches on our build-out plans this morning then took them for reproduction copies, dropped 3 sets off to our engineer with hopes that we can get them stamped soon. With any luck we will be able to get the plans to the city by the end of the week. In the meantime, we will be heading to the Health Department Wednesday morning to submit 3 copies for their assessment and hopeful approval. Spent all night arranging cut sheets for all of the equipment that will be installed and or placed into the brewery. The Health Department wanted a list, model and description of the items, so we thought we would go a bit further and give them some more paperwork to look at.

Brewer's Notice

We received our Brewer's Notice yesterday! It was not as painful as we thought it would be. We have heard the stories of needing to have your brewing system up and in place so that the TTB could come out and inspect it prior to receiving the Notice. During the TTB interview, I mentioned that I thought that they would have to inspect, like I had previously heard. The woman stated that they no longer operate like that. The interview was basically just a reiteration of what we had filled out on the packet, it lasted about 30 minutes. We then discussed our layout, which was not the current layout we had designed. I immediately emailed her the current layout without the partitioned walls. We had proposed only a curb around the brewing area, much like Patrick has at The Bruery. She then stated that they are requiring new breweries to partition the operation from the public. With that discussion along with a somewhat similar discussion with the Health Department, we decided to do away with the curb and construct a 10' wall with the top 6' being of a plexiglass material so the public can still see into the brewing area.

Next up approval and receipt of our ABC license, which we hope happens soon!