construction

I really hope this is the last update I have to provide on construction of this brewery.  It's been a quixotic quest of sorts that I'll miss soon enough, but for now it is getting old.  A lot of people ask if we have run into any major issues that have slowed us down, a question I've always answered no to.  The biggest lesson learned for me is that everything takes longer than you want it to.  Coordination is an art form that requires patience as well as persistence.  The G.C. and all the subs are working for you, but the best ones also take great pride in their work and are working for themselves, building a reputation that they take to the next job. Some

Starting upstairs, we insulated the attic this week and the drywall is going up fast since there aren't many walls up there.  We've fired up several of the heating systems, which makes working all the more pleasant.  Now if only we could lose that porta-potty.  Downstairs, the bathrooms have doors and wall finishes, but the fixtures still haven't arrived.  The kitchen sinks and dishwasher are plumbed so we can finally wash our hands without the use of a garden hose.

The brewery glycol cooling system is partway installed and we should brew at the end of this week.  In the dinning room & bar area, the back bar coolers for our guset bottled beer were dropped into place on Friday and tiling behind the bar began.  When that's done, we'll install the rest of the bar equipment.  The front bar has been hanging out for a few weeks, but is still awaiting some dust-free time to receive its epoxy finish.  The back should arrive this week with it's 12" diameter carved-fist columns.  For perspective, here's a tap handle sitting on one in progress at the wood shop:

 

The highlight of our progress last week was the painting of the tin ceiling, which came out great and has allowed a lot of finish carpentry to commence.  Now everybody asks if it is the original ceiling since it looks so shiny. I say "Yes, but it took two months to take down, flatten out the tin and reinstall" 

Here's the view as you walk in our new front doors:

The front bar (that seats 30) has been installed and is covered in plastic so we can paint the tin ceiling a metallic pewter shade.  All of the drywall work is complete on the first floor and painting should be complete by the end of this coming week.  The glass wall looking in the brewery is in and we are starting to put up the finish woodwork around the dinning room, which is going to take a few weeks.  The old maple floors still need to be refinished along with that structural column you see next to the bar.  The kitchen is semi functional with the gas flowing to all of the equipment. 

In the brewery we finally fired up our steam boiler last Friday and after using the process of elimination to complete the wiring we heated up some water for the first time.  Jim has replaced all of the gaskets through the system, which is just good practice when you buy used equipment.  We're still waiting for the glycol installation to be complete (the installer has the flu) but hopefully we'll brew this week.  I think we're going to brew a Workingman Mild for the first brew.  It's our favorite all-round drinker but at the same time it isn't too complicated a brew to kick things off when we are just getting to know the system.

As we look at a pic of chef Jason standing by the stained glass windows that probably came from a church, let's pray that we are open by Christmas.  That's our ideal timeframe, and while hardly anything has been ideal up to this point, we've got a lot of reasons to be positive these days.

The kitchen, brewery and bathrooms are just about all tiled and ready for the finishing touches.  Our new glycol cooling system for the brewery is on the roof and it will piped to the tanks this week.  We got our gas meter last week so we can fire up the boiler and plug in our kitchen appliances.  Yesterday on Saturday there were about 10 guys working on various tasks and Bogdan, the hardest worker on the site was making rooftop connections today as many of you enjoyed brunch. 

The installation of the bar is underway as we replace the old floor where it will sit and lay quarry tile.  The beer lines are half run in the serving cooler and will pop up through the floor to the new bar in about two weeks.  The long awaited storefront will also start appearing in the next two weeks.

On the operations side, we are pretty settled on the food menu and are starting to order, glasses, mugs, plates and growlers.  Our point-of-sale system is about half programmed and all the network and A/V cabling has been pulled through the walls.  We'll start posting for jobs later this week on the main page. 

 

I know it has been a few weeks since the last update, but feel better when I tell you that I've been too busy to sit down and type one in.  Since we've last talked, the kitchen has finished walls, the fermentation cellar has a new 20' tall tile wall, the beer lines are starting to go in and we've completed putting the old tin ceiling back up. 

We've hired a great general manager, Michelle Foik who took a trip with me today to see the bar under construction.  It's a 'walk-around' island bar in the shape of a parallelogram and this was the first time I actually saw the shape of the bar in firsthand.  In my mind I've second guessed this game plan the last few months as it chews up a lot of floor space, but seeing it convinced me to set aside the doubts for good.  Aaron and the guys have done a great job so far on the front bar which you can see here.  The first pieces will start arriving next week and we should have everything in place in a few weeks time.

New roof is being installed this weekend.  Last weekend they craned the new HVAC units up there along with lots of fresh air fans and cooling compressors for the walk-in coolers.   I'd love to get a green roof going up there eventually, but for the time being, priority #1 is keeping that rain out of the building.  What used to be a few drops that were catchable with a few buckets has gotten a lot worse during construction.  And now that we are starting to drywall it was time to put the fix on for good.  With all the masonry costs of rebuilding three hundred feet of coping walls, we're spending $50K to make this problem go away.  An investment in the future I keep telling myself.

Inside the tin ceiling went back up at the hands of Stanley the carpenter with a big belly laugh.  Should be finished and painted by the end of this week.  Wednesday will be our last rough inspection (HVAC) with the city, which has been holding back our finish work.  I've been busy plundering Craigslist for gently used kitchen equipment, which seems abundant in these times of uncertain economies.  Compared to what everything costs new, we've saved quite a bundle, though not as much as that roof costs.

The steam piping from the boiler to the brewhouse is complete and Peoples Gas delivered our new four inch gas line last week.  We're still waiting on the meter, but this week I expect to be "cooking wih gas".  There's a good chance that we might hit the trifecta of gas, water and electricity in the brewery this week, although we are still waiting for some tile work to really get down to business.

The bar is being built up in Wilmette and is scheduled to start showing up in pieces in two weeks.  The beer taps have been ordered and we are starting to pick out glassware.  Thinking about imperial pints for mug club members.  Todd thinks we should go metric, since the English standard system is just so....imperial.  Brad wants dimpled mugs. Any suggestions from the peanut gallery?

The current Vegas over/under date for opening:

Brew on Halloween, open after Thanksgiving

The HVAC team welded the black iron hood duct today.  I took a little video of Carlos going to town while perched on top of our new twenty foot kitchen hood.  There was also some welding in the front related to our new facade as a couple new tube steel columns went into to support new transoms and folding windows.  Tomorrow the flange bases of those new columns will get covered in concrete as we pour new entryways and bases for our flower planters.  The windows themselves are special orders and won't be installed for a while, but it is real important that we move this piece forward since it is lagging behind compared to the interior.  The concrete crew poured the last of the staircase pans inside today including the 'grand' staircase going up to the raised booths and 2nd floor space:

The full scale drywalling of the interior begins tomorrow with the arrival of 250 sheets of rock.  The tin ceiling will go up next week and then we can really begin the finish work like building booths and bringing in the new bar when it is ready.  One thing that we banged out this past week is the first of several bourbon barrel walls.  Using cast off barrels from Goose we deconstructed the components and are using the charred amerian white oak staves as wall coverings.  Here they cover the drink rail across from the bar.  When you come in and the bar is full, this is where you will be with a place to put your drink down.

 

Lastly, but most importantly we got our federal Brewer's Notice approved yesterday, which means we have Uncle Sam's OK to brew beer and of course pay our appropriate excise taxes.  Now we just need state approval to be fully permitted to manufacture some brew.  The final license is the city license to actually sell retail beer to all you lovely people, but we have 10 or so inspections to pass before we get that....

 

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.

August has been a pretty strong month with a lot of progress inside. Rough framing is finally complete. Here's a shot of the kitchen showing the raised platform for the pizza oven which arrived a few weeks ago:

Last week I went and picked up three beautiful, 12-foot tall stained glass windows that came out of a church somewhere. They had been sitting in a barn for twenty or so years and are in pretty good shape for their age. We're going to use them to frame the opening of the brewery viewing window and also in the back bar. I think they'll add a nice touch of class to the joint.

Brewer Jim and Chef Jason are working part-time helping to get the place in shape. The three of us have been building walk-in coolers lately. Here's a shot of the inside of the tall 1st floor cooler that we'll be able to store pallets of kegs in:

And finally, last week after having to move them many times to get them out of the way, we moved our brewhouse, fermenters and serving tanks into their final place. The water is now on, but we still have about 6 weeks before we can start test brewing on site.

The majority of the rough-in construction work is complete and the finals walls are now up.  The HVAC team has a lot of work to do in our big building, connecting 6 units on the roof plus the hood, makeup air and brewery exhaust.  Our new electrical service isn't connected yet, but the electricians should be working double time next week now that all the walls are up. Overall rough-in progress is about:

concrete: 95%
carpentry: 90%
plumbing: 95%
electrical: 30%
HVAC: 30%

The drywall crew is just getting started covering up one side of a few walls so we can move things forward.  Here they are in the two-story fermentation cellar, which they finished today:

Once that is painted and the floor gets quarry tile, we can drop the tanks in from the first floor.  The big copper brewhouse made its big move this week now that all of the concrete floor is poured inside.  It weighs about 8000# empty (20,000# full of liquid) but moving it went pretty smooth.  We put a pallet jack on each end of the 7' x 15' skid and used the forklift as a tow to move it a few inches at a time.  Our walk-in coolers arrive next week along with our stone pizza oven, which also requires the forklift to put in place.

Upstairs, the grain milling room and office are framed out, which is all that we are building for the time being.  I ordered a grist case today to hold our milled malt above the mash tun.  A second carpentry team is working to reinstall the tin ceiling in places we had to take it down during construction.  They also built a temporary wall in the front today so that we can begin working on the storefront.  Next week expect to see some scaffolding and activity out front as we remove the brick front on our way to installing glass.  It will be at least a month before that is completed, but it marks another turning point as we begin working in earnest in the bar area. 

Aaron the bar builder stopped by today with some sample woden fist tap handles that he cut on his CNC machine. I'll get a picture up soon.  He is still waiting on us to build a few soffits before starting work on the bar, which will feature big versions of the carved fist serving as columns. 

The concrete in the brewhouse and bathrooms is now complete and all the adjoining walls are up.  Most of the plumbing rough-in is also done and electrical is in full force.  Today the big pipes going outside for the new 1200 amp service were installed.  We're still waiting on ComEd to install the new transformer, but it looks like we are only a couple week away from hooking up the new service.  There's no wire in the pipes yet, so all you copper thieves reading this blog can go back to what you were doing. 

Unfortunately, due to the nice weather, the uncooperative concrete contractor didn't show up at our indoor job site today, so the kitchen floor will have to wait.    Upstairs we did get a new plywood floor for the back office and the malt room today.   The HVAC sub contractor has been a little slow getting going as has the iron guy, but he's expected tomorrow with the new front staircase.  It's the stair that will take you up to our second floor space that has yet to be officially named and won't be ready when we open anyways. 

In the front of the house, Jim and I have been working on the booths and the adjoining bar area drink rail.  Today we picked up a vintage quarter-sawn oak built-in hutch from Zina of Logan Square Kitchen.  She salvaged it and had it stripped, but didn't end up using it.  I'm going to turn into a backbar display for our host stand and merch area.   Speaking of merch, I've been getting more and more requests for hats and tees, but we are all out for the moment.  We'll get more soon and Todd has promised to get our online store going as soon as we start paying him for our website work. I would link to his new company's website offering Drupal website hosting, but alas, their site still needs some work.

Even more in front of the house, the plumbers finally brought the new water service into the building last week.  Since our beer will be mostly water, this is a good thing.  Here's a pic of the new 4 inch line entering the basement as seen from the street:

After the plumbers dug holes in the sidewalk and the street and got the line most of the way out to the city line, the Water Department crew showed up to make the tap.  Having never before seen this process, I was quite enthralled.  Visions of spouting water never materialized however and the whole process was done in about 45 minutes.  The main line in Milwaukee was maybe 10 inches, and they put a neat gasketed, stainless, clamp-style tee fitting on it:

Then they put a valve on the flange and hooked up an extendable air drill with a hole saw through the valve and cut open the city main.  The drill extended back out and they closed the valve without wasting a drop.  Not rocket science but impressive to see it done so smoothly and quickly.  The crew said they do about 4-5 a day and had to head to Hegwisch next, so they probably spent more time driving than plying their trade.  Now I just want to see how a Peoples Gas crew taps into the 24 inch monster of a gas main which was also in the street:

This is the kind of work to leave to the professionals.  Thanks to the neighbors for putting up with the sidewalk closure for a few days, so that the world may enjoy some tasty beer in a few months.