Westbrookbrewing.com is live!

Our website, www.westbrookbrewing.com , is now live!
This blog is moving to westbrookbrewing.com/blog, so all future posts will go up there.

Construction, Promotion, and Legislation

Things have been pretty busy here at Westbrook Brewing since I last posted. In 1 month, the brewery site has been transformed from a patch of pine trees into a cleared, graded, formed, plumbed, and rebar-ed brewery-to-be. Provided that the weather cooperates, the first 2 pours of concrete for the slab should happen later this week, and then next week the steel beams for the building structure (which were delivered this morning) will start going up. A few pics below, but you'll have to go to our Facebook page to check out the full album.

View from Ridge Road

The building pad

Steel!

Unloading truck 1 of 4

In other news, this past Friday was the public (sort of) debut of some Westbrook Brewing test batches! Morgan and I served up 6 different beers at an event on Daniel Island, and the response was fantastic. As I expected, the ginger/lemongrass Belgian white was the most popular, but our double dry-hopped West coast style IPA was also a big hit. The coolest part of the night was seeing people who told us "I'm not a beer drinker" or some variation of that statement try a taste and then come back a few minutes later for a full glass.

Morgan and I bracing for the onslaught of thirsty people

(sorry for the blurry pic)

Last but definitely not least, the SC Microbrewery Tasting bill, H. 3693, has passed the House with a unanimous "yea" vote and is now scheduled for a Senate subcommittee hearing this Thursday, May 6. All the SC brewers will be there to testify, but we need your support! Read this Support Your Local Brewery action alert to find out how to help. There is exactly one month remaining in the 2010 legislative session and there is a real danger that the bill may not pass simply due to running out of time!! That's why we need you to contact the senators listed at the link above before Thursday and urge them to get behind this bill and move it quickly through the Senate. We're so close!

We have land!

I've been waiting a long time to type this post.

Finally, after a very long and unnecessarily difficult process fraught with numerous and myriad delays and setbacks, I'm very happy to announce that Westbrook Brewing Company at about 11:30 am today officially closed on the site where we will construct our brewery! The location is at 301 Ridge Road in Mt. Pleasant, which is right next to the Velocity Sports Performance building on Wando Park Blvd and backs up to I-526.

View Larger Map

Although we had a long delay closing on the property, we were able to use that extra time to get our building designed, approved, and ready to go, which means that on Monday our contractor will start clearing and grading the site! 

301 Ridge, now

301 Ridge, in 6 months

The brewery is going to be approximately 15k square feet, and will house our 30 barrel brewing system and 60 barrel fermenting tanks, a cold room, a separate "cool" room for storing oak barrels, a quality control lab, and (hopefully) a tasting room where we'll feature our standard beer lineup as well as some small batch, experimental brews.

As construction progresses I'll be posting some photos on here periodically, but keep an eye on our Facebook page for the full construction photo album.

We can't wait to start brewing beer for all you thirsty people out there! Buckle up, South Carolina!

Microbrewery Tasting Bill Update

From a post by Coast Brewing on Beeradvocate:

Our bill,  H. 3693 is up for Full Judiciary on March 9 (please note the amendment was approved last meeting but I still don't see the new language on the statehouse site)- so now we need your support on this committee- Phone Calls work the best but we'll take your emails as well.

Statehouse site:  http://www.scstatehouse.gov/html-pages/housecommlst.html#jud  (look for Judiciary Committee) we need to contact each member on that Committee (all 25 of em)

Again- we so appreciate the support from each one of you!

Brewvival Weekend Wrapup

Well I think I've finally recovered from what has to be the best weekend of beer events Charleston has ever seen. The Charleston Brewvival brought together about 30 breweries, 70-80 amazing beers, and over 1,000 beer lovers on Saturday for 6 hours of beer tasting, hanging out, and general awesomeness. The weekend started early with a Stone beer dinner at Chai's and a Foothills cask at Closed for Business on Thursday night. Sadly I was unable to go to either of these events as I was still trying to recover from the worst-timed head cold in history. Thankfully by Friday evening I was in good enough shape to head down to The Griffon for some special beers from The Bruery and New Belgium. Greg Koch, CEO of Stone Brewing, was also in attendance and we talked a little bit about the brewing business, which was super cool.

 Greg and Edward (me!)

 

We also made a contribution to the wallpaper.

 

 A good time was had by all, except for that creepy 

guy with the beard.

The next day we headed out to the big festival, stopping along the way at the top-secret Westbrook Brewing pilot brewery for some test-batch sampling. The Brewvival itself was amazing. At most of the other beer festivals I've attended, you can go down the beer list and quickly mark off which beers you want to try and which beers you can skip. No such luck here. Just about every one of the 70+ beers was a must-try, so we set to work. I didn't take any photos of my own from the festival, but you can check out some here,  here and here. My favorite beers of the day were the New Belgium Love, The Bruery's Oude Tart, and the Ommegang Rouge (I kinda like sour beers). All in all it was a fantastic festival and I certainly hope it becomes an annual event. If it is, you can bet that the Westbrook Brewing crew will be on the other side of the serving tables in 2011 dispensing our own crazy beer creations!

Beer Bill Progress!

Great news today - the microbrewery tasting bill was successfully amended and left the Judiciary subcommittee with a favorable report! This means that the bill could be on the floor of the House by the middle of next week. We still need your support for H. 3693 so keep an eye on the SC Brewers Association site for updates. Read the news article on H. 3693 here.

Another beer-related bill, H. 4572, also passed out of the subcommittee today. This bill will allow retail stores like The Charleston Beer Exchange to finally conduct beer tastings. This bill is long overdue and will go a long way towards educating people about good beer. Again, be sure to check out the SC Brewers Association site to find out how you can help.

SC Microbrewery Tasting Bill

H. 3693 is on the agenda for the Judiciary General Laws Subcommittee meeting tomorrow, 2/17. This bill is really important for the future of SC's microbreweries!

For more info on how to help check out the South Carolina Brewers Association site.