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Why are you taking my picture?Submitted by josh on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 03:53Because you are installing one our new eco-urinals that just use a pint of water to flush. Have a pint, give a pint, right? I've talked about them before, and today they were installed so we can pour concrete right up to them.
As the planning proceeds for the first floor concrete we have to deal with the fact that the center of the building has settled about four inches over the past hundred years. A ramp here and a ramp there should do the trick. Slow as malt extractSubmitted by josh on Mon, 06/22/2009 - 23:35Construction has been real slow lately. Subcontractors not showing up and other subcontractors waiting for the guys who haven't shown up to complete their work before they show up. I'm incredibly impatient, and the hot muggy weather is probably adding to that. Today, although there was no one working in the restaurant space, the HVAC contractors were up on the roof preparing for the 45 tons of new cooling power we are bringing in (it's a big space). It was probably 100+ up on that roof, so I'll stop complaining at least while seated in my comfy semi-air conditioned home office. In addition to depleting the ozone layer with our new tonnage of AC, the Revolution is now officially fossil fueled with the acquisition of a 2003 Dodge Dakota:
All my hardcore bicycling friends are welcome to comment on my slow slide away from idealistic environmentalist to capitalist pig. Pilot Brewing: Cross of Gold + Iron FistSubmitted by josh on Wed, 06/17/2009 - 03:48And for a little break from the dirt and dust, brewer Jim and I hung out in my dank basement today to start pilot brewing recipes. We're a couple months away from brewing on the big copper system on Milwaukee Ave, but just a few blocks away, I've got a converted keg system that works just fine for now. For Jim, after working at places like Goose, it is a bit of an adjustment to make such small batches.
Barrels become gallons and pounds become ounces, and you can pretty much just adjust recipe percentages and see how it comes out. We went out of our way to cross every 'T' today with our brewhouse calculations and document every aspect. Having been out of professional brewing for many years, I'm a bit rusty but have a couple good Excel spreadsheets that I rely on. Jim on the other hand is sharp as a tack and likes to do everything longhand showing his work like my fifth grade math teacher wanted me to. First up we brewed Cross of Gold which will be the lightest colored regular offering but it won't be no slouch. It's an American Golden Ale, sometimes called a Blonde Ale. BJCP Style 6b if you are wondering. And while I'm mentioning the Beer Judge Certification Program, here's a plug for their neat iPhone app which I just downloaded. Jim and I used to brew a Blonde at Goose Fulton, but they don't make it there anymore in the age of 312. Our recipe has some similarities to that one and is intended to be dry but with a noticeable hop aroma. Goose used the "clean with a touch of spicy" Mt. Hood hops, but were going with more of a classic American microbrew aroma with some late Cascades and a delicate dry hop to be determined. It's pretty low on the bitterness side and will be around 5.5% alcohol by volume. Today's batch came out of the kettle at 13.5 degrees Plato, a touch higher than we wanted because the basement system's efficiency was a little better than expected. Our second batch of the day was Iron Fist Pale Ale our soon-to-be have-it-around-all-the-time standby. It clocked in at 16 Plato and Jim was real happy with the color. Here he is adding some Summit hops with a smile:
Jim also came up with the fun name for this one, which he was quick to point out is also a Motorhead song. Mickhail Burton gets credit for naming Cross of Gold and Quenchers' IPA Fest gets credit for getting us tipsy enough to decide to name a beer after a famous speech from 1896 (by a prohibitionist no less). Well with many folks suffering these days from a new economic malaise, the name makes sense to me. On many levels. Sure the speech was made in Chicago, that's just gravy. The connection he makes between cities and farms still stands out to me still today as does the way he makes monetary policy real for the working man. A few years ago I made it through reading William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis, which is all about Chicago's growth being connected with nearby farmland and natural resources. Good for a long summer vacation read for all you farmers market going policy wonks out there. Rod's Fucking Golden Ale has a good ring to it too, but somehow it just isn't as timeless. Construction Update: 6/11/09Submitted by josh on Thu, 06/11/2009 - 18:22Construction is still slogging along at 2323 N. Milwaukee. The carpenters built a few more walls this week and we got another flight of steel stairs. One more stair from the brewery down to the fermentation cellar and we'll be ready to pour the concrete floor. All the coordination required for this element of the project has definitely slowed down our pace. A lot of other work is waiting for the floor to be poured including tiling, building the remaining walls and all of the electrical and HVAC work.
Upstairs we have new glass block windows (replacing concrete block) which let the sun shine into the back of the space. Jim and I have continued working on the new dining room tables. On the roof, the curbs for the HVAC units arrived, which marks the start of that trade. Today's big downer was the freight elevator, which went down for the second time so far. The elevator was so old that it ran up and down on wooden rails, one of which just split:
This time might be the last for this ancient device, as the cost to repair outweighs what we'd expect to get out of it down the line. This leaves us without a way to move our malt up to the second floor other than on our backs. People often ask if we've run into any unanticipated setbacks as we've opened the walls and got to work. I used to say not really, but now we've got a certifiable issue to confront. We can probably make do without it and just wait for the passenger elevator to be installed. Otherwise, a new freight elevator would run into the six digits. This shouldn't directly affect our construction pace since we aren't using the elevator for anything in particular right now. I guess I should have expected that one since it was such an old unit, but I just assuming since it was working it would keep on keeping on. My mistake. Construction Update: 6/4/09Submitted by josh on Fri, 06/05/2009 - 02:51We still haven't poured that final concrete floor yet, but we're getting closer. The plumbers finished up all the rough-in this week and most of the interior masonry work is now complete. We still need a couple steel staircases to be installed so we'll have a smooth transition with the new floor. Hopefully we'll pour next week, cause I'm starting to lose sleep over this delay. I'm self medicating with a nice dunkel lager tonight.
The carpenters came back to the jobsite today and began work in the dinning room. Other than the plumbing for the bar which shoots up from the floor, this is the first visible sign of life in the front of the building. As we moved tanks and our collection of bourbon barrels into the basement, we've made room to start framing walls up front. Since our overall design calls for a pretty open space, there aren't many walls to frame up front. Here you can see the platform for our raised booth area taking shape beyond a wall of copper vent lines:
Other than that, I've been busy making tabletops and custom lighting fixtures. More about that when they are ready to show off. In addition to carpentry, the electricians are due to getting started any day now (tomorrow?) as is the HVAC subcontractor. Ordered the fireplace today and am about to order the pizza oven and the walk-in coolers. We'll probably wait to take delivery of the rest of the kitchen equipment for a few months when the dust settles. However, it will be hard to fit the pizza oven in later when all the walls are built and it will be a hell of a lot easier to put in place with the forklift.  |
