Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Bringing It All Back Home


Right now, as I write (it’s 1:30, Wednesday March 18, 2009), Matt’s sitting in a bar in SeaTac drinking a beer and waiting for his plane to Billings, Montana. From there he’ll rent a car and drive to Red Lodge, a small town about an hour and a half outside Billings in the mountains on the highway to Yellowstone and also home to Red Lodge Brewery. Matt is finally TAKING POSSESSION of the brew system he bought from them now that Red Lodge’s new facility is built and they can use their new, bigger system.

I say finally because we first met the gorgeous, 15 bbl system last September when the whole family road-tripped to MT in order to check it out (and visit my uncle who lives in Billings while we were at it). Since then, Matt has signed the lease, acquired fermentation tanks and a bunch of other equipment, laid plumbing, redid the electrical, painted, built a wall and more (much thanks to all the volunteer and cheap labor!) – everything but brew beer!

The Plan: Matt arrives in Billings at 6:30 tonight. He’ll drive straight to Red Lodge and help the crew brew one lasty: a triple batch of IPA because they don’t want to leave their customers jonesing while they get their new system up and running. Tomorrow, Thursday, Matt will spend all day helping to clean everything so that it’s ready to be loaded on a big truck (with a crane, my sons would add) on Friday the 20th. He’ll supervise the loading and fly home that night and the truck will arrive in Seattle on Tuesday, March whatever.

It’s happening! Stay tuned…

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