Buying the Brewhouse

Well, we finally located and purchased a brewhouse. Patience is truly a virtue when buying brewery equipment. The brewhouse is a gorgeous 15 BBL (that's 30 full-size kegs) system manufactured in Denver in 1996 and currently in use by Red Lodge Brewing Co near Yellowstone in Montana [www.redlodgeales.net]. The system is electrofinished stainless steel and looks like chrome. She shines up easily to a mirror finish and produces some fine brews for the guys and gals at Red Lodge. I took the whole family out to Montana for this trip and had a fine time touring the brewery, brewing with the team at Red Lodge and sampling the finished product...ah, starting a brewery is hard work sometimes. The only downside of the purchase is that we won't able to transport it here until March or April so we'll have to figure something out between January 2009 and April in order to produce and sell our beer. I've been talking to some Seattle brewers about the new contract brewing arrangement the Washington State Liquor Control Board recently allowed so we'll be able to offer beer in limited quantities prior to getting our new system installed. Stay tuned. Also, see the pics below for a preview. Now, it seems real...and then I have to figure out how to transport it.

Trip to Puterbaugh Farms

Well, I lose blog points for not updating this in a long while. I pledge to improve. So, catching up on the last month or so, I took a trip to the brewery's hop supplier - Puterbaugh Farms - and was amazed by the complexity of the machinery and sheer manpower required to raise, harvest, process and package our beloved hops. To think we were paying such a lowly sum for these jewels a short time ago...Our host for the trip, Tyler, is one of the Puterbaugh family members and was extremely gracious with his time as we spent most of the day touring the hop harvesting, processing, packaging and storage facilities. Tyler and his family have been growing hops in the Yakima Valley area for four generations and grow some of the choicest hops in the world. We are extremely fortunate to have such an amazing resource in our state and to be able to use these hops in our beers. Thanks, Tyler. I've posted some pictures of the trip to give a flavor of the operation. We look forward to featuring the Puterbaugh Family hops in our beers.