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!

Stuff is happening!

So it's been almost 2 months since my last post. Sorry about that! It turns out that starting a brewery is pretty time consuming (who knew?!) and things like blogging have a tendency to get neglected. Anyway, things are finally starting to happen. Here's a quick rundown:

• Our building design was approved by Mt. Pleasant! Now there's just a few more permits that need to go through before we can start construction.
• We have a logo. Josh, Mason, and Helen over at Fuzzco did a great job creating a simple, but powerful logo for us. Check it out at www.westbrookbrewing.com.
• The brewing equipment has been ordered! Our 30 bbl brewhouse and 60 bbl cellar tanks from Allied Beverage Tanks are being designed and fabricated now, and should be delivered by the end of May.
• Our website is under development. Should be live in about 2 months. 

That's all the major stuff so far. From this point on there should be more frequent updates, so stay tuned. 2010 is going to be an awesome year!

Biz Update

Thought everyone might like an update on where we are in terms of actually getting the brewery up and running, so here goes:

Location - We've narrowed it down to two possibilities, one in Mt. Pleasant and one in the upper peninsula area of downtown Charleston. We'll be making a final decision on this fairly soon. Once the location is nailed down, we can make plans for any necessary construction/renovation, buy equipment, and get the TTB approval process rolling.

Equipment - We know that we want to start with a 25 or 30 barrel (bbl) capacity brewhouse (1 bbl = 31 gallons). It takes the same amount of labor to brew 7 barrels (average size of a brewpub system) as it does to brew 30 barrels, so we figure it's best to get the biggest system we can afford. We've been looking at various sources of new and used equipment and are ready to go as soon as the brewery location is certain.

Pilot Brewing - I just moved down to Charleston permanently last month and have been brewing on the 5 gallon all-grain "system" I started with more than 3 years ago (system in quotes because it's not really a system at all, just a bunch of misc. stuff). I've brewed some great beer with that equipment but it's much too labor intensive and can only make 5 gal. at a time, so I've ordered a shiny new 20 gallon brewsculpture from MoreBeer, which should be arriving in about a month. This should help me be more consistent from batch to batch and also make it easier to split batches between multiple fermenters to experiment with different yeasts, dry hopping , etc.

Government approval - Alcohol producers are regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). In order to apply for the Brewer's Notice (basically the federal license that allows you to operate a brewery) you need to have your location, your facility/equipment layout, and a bunch of other stuff. Once we get the Brewer's Notice, we'll be able to apply for a license from the SC Dept. of Revenue.

As you can see we have a lot of work ahead of us before we can actually start brewing beer. Our goal is to be open for business by this time next year, which I think is definitely possible.