Shameless Rants and Confessions of an Aspiring Pro

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Been going through all the material from the CBC and picked up a boiler user manual.

Taught myself to sweat copper pipes for the glycol system. I still have a lot to learn about glycol load calculations. If anyone out there is a refrigeration expert with some free time please msg me!

I can't believe how many cleaning chemical supply companies are out there. I am leaning towards a combo of 5 star (sanitation), Birko (kegs and brite), and one other supplier (brewhouse and conicals).

From what I understand the kegwasher we picked out at the CBC has also been ordered.

RR+SN dry hop lecture came to a conclusion that dry hop loads scale equally. Also in big tanks the essential oils are more dense near the surface.
Advanced Sour Lecture: Not much super notable info. Use a clean primary strain. Blend to achieve profiles.
DIY Lecture: Made me more confident in my DIY skills, lecture introduced PID's and such. I may have to hunt down and bug P-J in the electric brewing forum.

Our website is live, but still under construction. Unfortunately, events listed, some of the beer names will be changing.
www.eaglecreekbrewingco.com
 
Been a quiet month. Brewhouse is expected in the first week of June.
The university is opening a new biology building and decommissioning a couple boilers it has been using for it's autoclaves. We are hoping to score them.
 
Congrats on the brewery man!

Sooooo much potential starting out so young, not to much "life" getting in the way yet :D
Your beer lineup looks awesome btw.

Hell with my wife and daughter, going to school and whatnot, its hard to even find the time and money to brew me up 5 gallons as often as I want to.

I cant wait to see how your brewing carrier evolves and once again CONGRATS!
 
I appreciate it.
I am pretty happy with the beer list too. I don't know how I feel about two wheat beers off the bat, but I love having a big imperial and a lager. I tried not to beernerd out on our descriptions.

I'd like to rant about the Dunkel.
I was told by a brewer (whom shall go unnamed) that I can make perfect beer or I can make good beer (of lower quality) and be able to pay the rent.
Maybe I'm just young and foolish, but I only want to make perfect beer.
I am going to use a decoction style mash with our Dunkel. Just a single with an extended mashboil.

I really want to put an all brett beer in the lineup. Thinking Citra/Galaxy Brett C IPA.

Passed BJCP Entrance Exam with 15 minutes to spare. Website says to study or you're wasting money. I didn't study.

World Beer Cup deadline is this October. Ready for the big leagues! (And the more precise categorization system)
 
Got a nice 750lb co2 tank this week.
If my calculations are correct the average batch will take approximately 13lbs to carbonate (without real-world variables)
co2.jpg

(shes the big one in the back)
 
Finally going to gain access to some decent cad drawings for our glycol system.
Looking very seriously at Georg Fisher plumbing over copper. It's some special kind of plastic that is better insulated than traditional copper. It is also much lighter and requires less support.
It cost's a bit more, but I would say I was impressed with the rigidity and quality of the plastic.
I really need to hunt down a big brother brewery to talk about these commercial-scale quandaries.
securedownload.jpg
 
Thundercougarfalconbird said:
I was told by a brewer (whom shall go unnamed) that I can make perfect beer or I can make good beer (of lower quality) and be able to pay the rent.
Maybe I'm just young and foolish, but I only want to make perfect beer.
Click to expand...

Maybe I am young and foolish, but why can't you do both? You'll be offering more than 1, make some perfect and some profitable.

Also - LOVE your website. Looking at the pint pictures made me go home and drink some...
 
I think I have our boiler picked out.
I'd like it to take us an hour to go from tap to boiling.
Gonna need a little more than 500,000 BTU's
boiler.jpg
 
Need a sidekick. Who has the drive insperation, testical foetitude to open his own brewery? But very little expereince. Thats pretty badass lioncougarfalconbird, long name person. I keep kicking meself in the ass. I should have listened to myself 10 years ago. I'd be glad to go to work then. Keep brewing baby.
 
We have our RO system ordered :tank: It gets 1 part RO to 1 part waste water at around 1000gallons a day.
Our water here is full of bicarbonate and is a real pain to brew with (can't make pale beer).
I will be storing the waste water in a big plastic container for chilling so it doesn't go to waste.

I think our upgraded water is going to set us apart from many of the breweries in the area.
 
How big is your RO holding tank going to be? Also, it's good that you can find a use for the waste water too.
 
Bah, scratch the pic of the boiler above. We need something low pressure that puts out 799,000 BTU's.
Got a bunch of legal done. If all goes well we will have our state licence Thursday.

No new gear has arrived but we did order a keg washer.
keg washer.gif
24-30 kegs per hour washed with acid, caustic, and sanitizer.
 
I really follow probrewer.com very closely. I have been planning my brewery around producing 1500bbl our first year. I need all these shineys to keep up!

WE GOT OUR STATE LISCENCE! :ban: I can make and sell beer now.
 
Thundercougarfalconbird said:
I really follow probrewer.com very closely. I have been planning my brewery around producing 1500bbl our first year. I need all these shineys to keep up!

WE GOT OUR STATE LISCENCE! :ban: I can make and sell beer now.
Click to expand...

Thundercougarfalconbird said:
Our brewhouse ships on the 24th! I will have plenty of shiney pics to post very soon.
Click to expand...

I thought you had to have the brewery ready to go before they would give you a licence?
Congrats and good luck! :)
 
A great story, very uplifting, thanks for sharing. I admit I was a little sceptical about producing bretts and sours, they must be a very small part of all beer sales. I see your line-up is imaginative but not too obscure. I hope to try some one day.
 
mattd2 said:
I thought you had to have the brewery ready to go before they would give you a licence?
Congrats and good luck! :)
Click to expand...

You have to have equipment in place, it doesn't necessarily have to be a completed brewery. We have our fermenters and brite tanks in place so we were able to go ahead and get our licence.

Yea, our sours and wilds are still a ways off. Got several months before we brew the first one and a good year before it's in bottles.
 
Been neglecting this thread because BIG THINGS HAVE BEEN HAPPENING.
We have glycol.
We have keg washer.
I picked up a little DE filter for stubborn beers.
OUR BREWHOUSE IS IN!

Brewhouse 1.jpg

Brewhouse 2.jpg

The moving guys dropped the BK, there doesn't look to be any serious damage, but I had to change my pants after the ordeal.
She is a thing of beauty. If anyone is curious about any of the fittings or features I'd love to talk about it.

We also went and brewed a contract batch of our pale ale.
Lazy Mag.jpg
This was my first professional scale batch. I guess I'm a pro-brewer now. It was a great day. I hit all my numbers.
 
Been a busy past few days getting geared up. We just released my Pale Ale (Low Country Pale Ale) in 47 locations in Statesboro and Savannah. BIG dry hop, GREAT Malt backbone, moderate bitterness. I went and oversaw its brewing at Lazy Magnolia.
We have all of our gear in house and are just waiting on various installations.
The boiler needs to be inspected and glycol needs to be hooked up then we are ready to brew.
I'll post a video tomorrow of our brewhouse features and other stuff I've picked up. Pumps and mash agitator are plumbed and wired, very fun to play with. The control panel is Auber based. I can't heat her yet, but in most liquid tests she handles like a dream.
 
Thundercougarfalconbird said:
Been a busy past few days getting geared up. We just released my Pale Ale (Low Country Pale Ale) in 47 locations in Statesboro and Savannah. BIG dry hop, GREAT Malt backbone, moderate bitterness. I went and oversaw its brewing at Lazy Magnolia.
We have all of our gear in house and are just waiting on various installations.
The boiler needs to be inspected and glycol needs to be hooked up then we are ready to brew.
I'll post a video tomorrow of our brewhouse features and other stuff I've picked up. Pumps and mash agitator are plumbed and wired, very fun to play with. The control panel is Auber based. I can't heat her yet, but in most liquid tests she handles like a dream.
Click to expand...

Looking forward to the video.
 
I dig it too. I'm pretty bad at this media thing so this video is a little rough, please forgive me.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Well that video is absolute proof that you are indeed a very good brewer! Most guys your age are experts at handling a video camera having filmed themselves and their friends doing stupid things along with fast cars, fast women and the occasional naughty video with their girlfriends. You have obviously been focused on your brewing :D :mug: All kidding aside, you are going to have some nice system to brew on. I hope you guys do well and when you get your beer distributed here in the Atlanta area, I'll be a buyer.
 
this is amazing. Good job! I can't wait to see how this continues to unfold. Echoing many here... Very inspiring!

I just started brewing this year and things have gotten carried away to say the least! People have been encouraging me to look into commercializing, but I feel like "Im such a NEWBIE!" Great to see someone else take the daring plunge... Hopefully it's in the cards! Just gotta keep trying to make great beer and hope someone notices!
 
im sorry i didint see this sooner. first off, holy crap, im envious of you, and great job getting there. also, nice picture with the founder of AHA and my personal inspiration, even more envious of that, haha
i had some questions: how long did it take for the license to become approved and active from the time that you filled out the paperwork?
How often do you brew per week/ month to meet your quota?
How long will you store the sours for?
 
hethacker12 said:
im sorry i didint see this sooner. first off, holy crap, im envious of you, and great job getting there. also, nice picture with the founder of AHA and my personal inspiration, even more envious of that, haha
i had some questions: how long did it take for the license to become approved and active from the time that you filled out the paperwork?
How often do you brew per week/ month to meet your quota?
How long will you store the sours for?
Click to expand...


Yea, I was super excited to meet Charlie P. I'm getting that pic framed in the brewery.
It took us about 6 months to get our federal, local, and state licences. You also have to get keg collars approved and submit formulas for any beer that uses anything but hops, grain, yeast, water. (Been waiting on approval for the hefe for months)
With this system I brew double batches to fill a fermenter. It's pretty common practice in the industry. My schedule is dependent on what kind of beer ends up selling the most honestly. As many as 6 brews a week at the moment.

The sours will be barrel aged for 1-2 years.

@ Jaybird-Was my first time using an Ipad I'll get better :cross:
@pkrath84-I am jealous of brewers in CA. You guys are close to the good hops.
 

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