This week we passed 1,000 Facebook fans. That’s insane. Absolutely nuts. For a brewery that can’t actually sell any beer yet, I think it’s damn remarkable, and I’d like to thank all of you. It may just take a click on your end, but we hope our antics, shenanigans and chicanery can amuse you along the way. As we have quite a few new faces, and it’s been a while since we’ve addressed the issue, this week I’d like to give a brief update on where we are, when we’re hoping to serve beer, what it is and how it is done.
Intense dude is intense
There’s what I’m calling a “progress thermometer” on the front of our site that shows you where we are at any given time: as the events that need to occur before we can sell beer pass, the thermometer will fill up. (Incidentally, if anyone is interested in the code for such a thing I’ll eventually be releasing it as a WordPress plugin) We’re still quite a way off from the end, but the tl;dr of this all is that we hope to be serving beer by the end of 2011.
Our application for a brewer’s notice from the federal Alcohol an Tobacco Taxation and Trade Bureau (TTB) is in. You may recall that it has been this way for a few months now, and while there have been some setbacks on both ends (which was to be expected) it should be coming… soon? We hope.
It’s not until the TTB gives its blessing that we can propose to the State Liquor Authority (SLA), and once we hear back from them it will be a small (ha) matter of being cleared by the state Department of Agriculture (as we fall under their jurisdiction and not the health department’s).
Then, while all of this is going on, we’re concurrently applying for some necessary permits so that we can mold the inside of the brewery to our needs. The “brewery buildout” section is at the end of the thermometer, true, but that’s because we anticipate it being the last hurdle.
I couldn't decide which picture I liked better so I decided to use both
Opening a brewery is a fun and rewarding job. I often marvel at the fact that, one day, it will be my job to tweet at you. It’s also fairly long and arduous, however: we started planning CBW almost a year ago, and have been working our asses of since August at the latest. It will all be worth it and then some, but we’ve said from the start that we want to help nanobreweries that come after us in any way that we can, so I think we would be remiss if we didn’t also occasionally point out the less-than-awesome parts that go along with the less-than-three ones.
No, not two, it makes the <3 sign. It’s a heart. Oh, forget it.
Hey Guys!! Great to see you are moving along and we are getting to point where we could submit our TTB app., but we lost our location and are scrambling for a new one. The reason I was posting a comment was to inquire about your TTB process? When we contacted the TTB we were told that the only time we could submit our Application was if our brewery was within a few weeks of brewing beer? Meaning we had to have all buildouts done and kettles in place for the TTB Field officer to inspect? Anyways love to hear your thoughts on that one and feel free to send an email to my private address if you don’t feel comfortable talking about it publicly.
Cheers
~Matt
Great new website by the way!!
Thanks for the website comment! It means a lot to me.
I think the TTB can give out messages that sound different depending on who’s saying it, because that’s not the first time we’ve heard that you need to have all your equipment in place before submitting. That hasn’t been the case for us, and I think it’s a miscommunication somewhere along the line.
We had to have a physical location and be paying rent on it. However, while we need to make quite a few changes to our building, we submitted the plans for our finished layout and they accepted them. (Of course, we don’t have our brewer’s notice yet)
This may have been made easier on our part because one of our owners, Greg, is an architect. This is what he does. We thought we had all our i’s dotted and t’s crossed and have still had to make a handful of minor corrections to our application (and, as I said, we’re not through the woods yet so more may be coming), so my guess would be that your building plans weren’t filled out to their liking? I can’t say for sure because it’s all Greek to me.
I’m sorry to hear about your building. If you’d like to talk more, feel free to email us.