brewery

Yes, we are open.

Being the great historian that I am, I managed to take one photo on opening night before my camera ran low on batteries.  Luckily a few others grabbed shots, including this one that I've been anticipating in my sleep the last year or so.  Good times all around the first few nights.  Wednesday was kinda chaotic, but it seems to get better each night as we work the kinks out.  Overall, our staff, including managers Michelle & Greg and Chef Jason did a Herculean job of serving everyone and keeping the positive vibe going. I gotta admit that I do feel like I've been run over by a truck. 

We got a little break tonight for the Super Bowl, which was appreciated since we are all pretty worn out after several of us put in back-to-back-to-back-to-back 15-18 hour days.  This blog has previously been about the business and while we start to trot out our beers and dishes, it's hard to keep away from all the navel gazing that I've been doing.

Being 'too' busy is the kind of problem that a lot of people wish for.  We are adjusting staffing, food orders and making more space for the kitchen everyday, but the brewery is slower to respond, which is by nature since beer takes a lot longer to make.   Our first casualty is going to be that we will be missing some of our mainstay beers over the next few months.  Although we have ample serving tanks, we only have four fermenters and people are drinking the beer faster than we can make it.  We are looking for more tanks and trying to make the best use of what we have, but here's advance notice that we are gonna be out of hoppy ales for a bit sometime next week.  Luckily we've got some nice guest brews on, including some hoppy ones like Goose Green Line and Founders Double Trouble  to tide you over.

Also, come on in an enjoy a pint of Eugene, our first seasonal this week while it lasts.  Brewer Jim was wholly responsible for this black beauty that is warming bellies nightly on Milwaukee Ave. 

That my friends is a picture of a frothing kettle of wort.  After several system failures and many, many trips to Home Depot, our brewery is up and running.  The fun part has officially begun.  On Wednesday, we brewed our first batch, Workingman Mild, a luncheon beer.  Things didn't really go perfectly, but that's pretty much what you expect on the first brew.  The steam system in particular has been finicky but in the process of addressing all the problems we've learned the inns and outs of our gently used equipment, which didn't come with an owner's manual.

I've heard an old brewer's superstition that you should toss out the first batch, but this one's already tasting good on day two and there's no sense wasting beer now is there?  We are staining and sealing the bar top over the holiday since the place is quiet and dust-free for a change.  The silence is a nice change since it has been hectic lately with all the finishing touches being made.  I took a few minutes today to just sit on the steps in the fermentation cellar and listen the bubbling blow-off bucket attached to that first brew.  Very peaceful.  I hope everyone else got what they wished for this year too.

I previously blogged about our new tap handle, but got to actually see one being made last week.  Here's a sped up video of one  being cut on the CNC machine:

Here's our tap handle made by Aaron the bar builder:

Jim brewed our third basement batch of Cross of Gold today, mainly because that was what we had ingredients to brew.  We wanted to brew pale ale, but we were short a few ingredients and got started early at 8am, long before Grow & Brew opens.  This incidence of poor planning convinced me that it is finally time to place our first monster order of malt, hops, brewing spices and other accoutrements we need to start brewing on the big system.  It is nice to run around town (or mail order) for brewing supplies at the homebrew level, but it is much nicer to have a truck pull up to your building with 4000 pounds of freshly malted barley and several hundred pounds of spicy, fruity hops.

Unlike hops, which have come down in price recently, one thing that you really don't need to spend too much money on is yeast.  Keep it clean and you can reuse the part of the previous batch and occasionally get a new batch to grow up. Or get a fresh squirt from a friendly neighborhood cerveceria (thanks Chris).  Brewer Jim was very proud of his new wide mouth yeast container that was a big improvement over the half gallon growler:

Now that we have electricity at the building we should be able to test out the grain handling system next week and it will be helpful to have a couple bags of malt around for that.  Unlike the water service which thundered through the pipes with a thud (although we still don't have fixtures) the electric juice came in but didn't really go anywhere at first.  Slowly, the electricians have been running a little wire here and there and lights start working.  Where you once had to run two 50' extension cords to power a saw, there is now an actual convenience outlet.  Yesterday we bought a wood/electric smoker and today 'Danny Boy' the Romanian electrician decided to wire it up and came down to the basement asking us "Are you ready to smoke?" 

The other exciting arrival of the day was the dishwasher hood.  Before starting this project I hadn't even thought that such a device existed to alleviate the constant humidity in the dish corner that creeps everywhere else.  Sure, it is just one more thing to buy and feed power to over time, but it will also help create happy campers.  Gotta keep that dishwasher happy.

Jim and I started assembling the first walkin cooler today for our serving tanks.  It assembles pretty easily, especially compared to the herculean task of moving the 50 or so panels off the truck and restacking them one by one.  We've got a whopping 10 fifteen barrel serving tanks, so in theory we could have 10 different in-house beers serving from tank at a time.  We're putting in a 16-tap system for both the first floor bar and the future bar upstairs.  I'm figuring that we'll have 8-10 or so of our own beers on tap and 6-8 guest taps.  So when are you going to open everyone asks?  Now I say November, but you never know.  Hopefully we'll be brewing in September sometime.  Most of our tanks will be in place in a couple weeks, so that seems like a somewhat reasonable dream.

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.

News travels lightning fast these days, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the blogosphere was tipped off that we had hired Jim Cibak as our brewer even before it was official.  For those who don't know Jim, he is not normally someone you would associate with lightning fast news or internet gossip.  He's a warm, genuine and painstakingly accurate kind of guy, and yes he is a South Sider if you couldn't figure that out.  I mention all that because he is going to bring the same painstaking commitment to the brew kettles when we fire them up in a few months. He's already helping to finalize recipes for our first brews and select suppliers of hops and barley.

Jim and I used to work together at Goose Fulton in the early days of that brewery.  He did all the hot side brewing, and I was a cellarman, minding the yeast and fermentation tanks. He went on to work at Three Floyds and then at the award-winning Firestone Walker on their extensive barrel-aging program. Most recently he helped open Crown Brewing in Indiana.

Sorry for the snowy picture Jim.  That's what happens when you use a flash in a dark dusty building, which is what we have at the moment. When not crafting recipes, Jim is helping to sweep up that dust to get our doors open this fall. 

Today we closed on our $2.25 million loan package with Banco Popular funding our building acquisition, construction and equipment. After two years of soliciting investors and pitching banks, this is the last financing hurdle to clear. All contractor and sub-contractor bids are in and I expect work to start as soon as next week.

I first made contact with Banco Popular a year ago this week at a Christmas party in Oak Park of all places. After being rejected by 12 other banks, I was in a pretty dour mood, but my former co-worker Paul Levin at the Logan Square Chamber of Commerce dragged me out to this party with the promise of meeting some higher ups at Banco. I got to shake the regional bank president's hand and more importantly, met Nelson, an in-your-face business banker who took a liking to our project. He fought hard to overturn the initial rejection of our loan and to get approval from their board of directors. Our funding roller coaster had a few more ups and down and today that ride thankfully came to an end.

What's Next

Construction is by far our biggest task ahead. We'll be starting with interior demolition of the old plaster walls and cutting the big hole in the floor for the two-story fermentation cellar. The big hole will enable easy access to the basement for all the concrete excavation ahead. In addition to all the new drain pipe, we are digging down a couple feet for a walk-in cooler for the six 8-foot tall serving tanks that will feed the bar. We're also carving a trash enclosure out of the rear wall of the building early on, though that may need to wait for decent weather.

Our application for a city liquor license was formally received by the city last week and we've submitted our federal application for a brewer's notice to the Tax and Trade Bureau (formerly the BATF). We won't get our city license until our construction passes final inspection, but we had to apply to get the building permit approved. Partner Nunzio Pizza and I went and got fingerprinted this morning at City Hall as part of the background check done on owners of liquor licenses. When I was printed for the Handlebar, we had to go to the west-side lock-up at the Area 4 Harrison Police Station, but now it is all digital and they take care of it downtown. Quick and painless, but not nearly as interesting an experience this around.

And finally, now that we have cash on hand we can shop for the few pieces of brewery equipment we still need and other toys. If you are reading this Santa, I would like a 48-volt, 4000# capacity sit-down electric forklift with a triple-stage see-thru mast and side-shift. Color is not important, but red would go nicely with the drapes.

Happy Holidays,

Josh Deth

Goose drilled bung holes in the top of the barrels and stored them upright in stacks of four per pallet to age and soak up the bourbon hiding in the wood. Inevitably, some barrels leak when first filled before swelling up in a day or so and becoming water tight. While at Goose, the sweet dripping beer from the barrels above coated a few of the barrels below and then air dried leaving a molasses-like goo. It will wash off just fine, but for the time being it's adding a nice sweet smell to our building. There's also a little beer left swishing around in a few barrels. I might just....

We've got BCS on tap at the Handlebar for a few more days for the somewhat unbelievable price of $10 a snifter. At $200 a 5-gallon keg it's the most expensive draft beer we've ever bought, but it is worth its weight in gold or something like that.

Into wood aged beer? Head to FOBAB next Saturday!