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Building a Brewery

Building R.Shea Brewing: Week 20-22, Dec 15-Jan 4

Jan 7, 2015

Weeks 16 through 19 were big weeks.  My Dad and I were getting tired and beat-up.  He had several colds and a few times had to take some days off.  As December came and it got colder Dad wasn't getting 100% better and kept relapsing.   If I was working, he was working (he's a great Dad) - I couldn't kick him out for him to fully get better.  During week 19 after the brewery wall tile job I was getting run down and a little sick too. We needed a break.

Interior Decorating Mockup Time!

It was a perfect time for a break with the holiday season coming around.  It was also a perfect time to plan the next phase - interior decorating.  So I cleaned the place up and took a bunch of pictures of the brewery area and some surrounding walls.  I primarily needed to figure out a paint color scheme for the walls along with what the bar would look like.  And of course this had to blend with the black marble floor.

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Left Brewing area BEFORE (2×4’s on floor are the bar top)

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Right Brewing area BEFORE

I plugged these photos into the Olympic.com website.  It's pretty slick - you can change the wall and trim colors of your room with any of their colors while preserving the shading.  The only problem I had was that the picture was too small.  I did learn that some colors I thought would work, wouldn't. I have gotten to be a decent hack with Adobe Photoshop over the last 10 years so I decided to play around in that environment so I had a much bigger picture.  It took awhile as I would get an hour into working on a wall only to find that I had to scrap my work to start over to get the full effect that I wanted.  I finally got far enough to give me a good idea on a wall color.

The Finished Taproom/Brewery Mockups

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Obviously the bar wall is not done and the signage was only in a rough form – more to see what I can fit…and it was far from complete. And this won’t be the bar stool we use. WAIT…WHO IS THAT DRINKING WITHOUT THEIR SHOES?!? “No shoes, no service” the sign says…

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I love the ‘art gallery’ look and I plan to have my signature beers as the artwork on a few walls. The sandy floor is unfinished – I didn’t get to that. It was tough finding flooring images that I could hack and skew correctly.

I ended up liking the greyish-blue color for the walls the best.  I went through quiet a palette in Photoshop and this color fit nice with a gallery look while also highlighting the brewing equipment - which is the heart of a brewery!  I want a 'dimmer' mood in the taproom - so no bright walls or overhead lights.  I want most of the lighting to be indirect lighting from pictures and lights on equipment.

*Note, the above pictures are only still rough ideas - a starting point for paint schemes.  This will NOT be what the final taproom/brewery will look like.

Lot's of Beer and Untappd

During these three weeks, my family and I visited some relatives for the Holidays - I took a case of miscellaneous beers that I haven't had yet, along with some Christmas present beer I received (surprise, surprise!) and tried and rated these beers on my Untappd account.  Feel free to friend me too!

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I’m up to the task!

What's Next?

  • Get two gallons of the paint in the mockups and give it a try.
  • Order a few burners to run some heating trials on the brew equipment (I'm doing a hybrid electric/gas system, so there is nothing 'standard' out there).
  • Possibly hook up my Micromatic 75' line chiller to one of the big 3.5bbl fermentors and run some cooling curves.  I need to order another one regardless and need to know if I need to get a bigger one.
  • Get the wood for the bar.  I'm finally going to start building it.

Thanks!

Thanks to my Dad for NOT working these weeks.  We're about to ramp up again for the final push so we both need to be fully rested.  Thanks to my Mom for picking up several color swatches for me to try out - she has a good eye for interior decorating.  Thanks also to assistant brewer Jesse as I was able to implement some of the signage ideas we discussed on a mockup-basis.

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