Digging the hole

It’s been a long two weeks of construction! Our hands and backs haven’t forgiven us yet, but the results are well worth it. I want to thank William, Robert, Brett, and Jay for coming out on a sticky Thursday night to help us rip up the floor. We really didn’t expect to start digging the hole to the sewer main until the next week, but you guys powered through it. We owe you many, many more beers for the effort! Cheers!

We will dig here... ... I think

... and so we begin

must have dug in the correct spot

Check out the Lucid Brewing page on Facebook for more photos!

By the way, I did finish brewing school.

Brewhouse at Hoppy Brewing, Sacramento, CA

Pub at Sierra Nevada Brewing, Chico, CA

What happened to 2009?

Taps at at Fitger’s Brewhouse - Duluth, MN

As one year ends and another begins, things have been quiet as far as the physical brewery goes. 2009 has been a year learning and making new friends.

Lucid Brewing – There’s a new Kid in Town by The Captain’s Chair

A few weeks back I chatted it up with Aaron Masterson of The Captain’s Chair.

Read about our conversation here: Lucid Brewing – There’s a New Kid in Town

Thank you Aaron for the article.

New pilot brewhouse

The order has been placed and the money put down on a new pilot brewhouse. This new brewhouse is still “small,” as its maximum capacity is only 2/3 bbl batches, but since we have not found a brewery location to-date, we are restricted in the pilot brewhouse’s size. On the plus side, this system has pretty much the same features found on a 10 to 30 bbl brewhouse. Its controller is at about the same level of complexity as a controller found on a bigger brewhouse, so hopefully the transition to brewing on a bigger brewhouse will be less painful when we find a brewery location in the future.

Now I have to round up some larger fermenters. By round up, I mean, find vessels that can be adapted to fermenter use, since new or used 1 bbl or smaller fermenters are ridiculously priced. I have a few months to work on the fermenters, since the brewhouse will not be ready until late August.

I cannot wait to brew on the new brewhouse.

Brewers Conference New England Cask Night

Twas another night at Harpoon. This time an offering of 60 cask ales from local New England breweries. My favorites of the night were Well Read Ale, a nicely balanced English Red Ale by Willamantic Brewing and Allagash’s Burnham Road. Burnham Road, a Belgian style smoked strong ale, didn’t have that strong ham bone smokiness, but more of a pleasant hash-like-sneak-up-on-you smooth smokiness. Of course I did not try all 60 cask ales, but from what I heard, all were quite good.

Brewers Conference Welcome Reception

 

The brewers conference welcome reception was hosted by Harpoon Brewery. Harpoon is conveniently located just a few blocks south of where the brewers conference was held. This is at the end of a day where we spent all day touring breweries. Did I need another beer? Ah, no. Did I have another beer. Hell yeah! Delicious beer it was. We had a great time chatting with other brewers and eating the chowder. Here’s a few pics.

Harpoon's beer bar

The coolest warehouse sound system ever.

Alyssa chats it up with Lyn Kruger of the Siebel Institute and Dave Anderson of Dave' Brew Farm. A startup brewery located near Wilson, Wisconsin.

Harpoon does brew beer here.

Off to Boston for the Brewers Conference

We just spent the weekend at my parents, where we left our son Liam and our dogs (Maggie and Cody) behind for a week of spoiling with the grandparents.

We get into Boston on Monday and plan on hitting a few pubs in Cambridge. We’re staying in east Cambridge, just across the St. Charles from Boston. Our schedule looks somewhat like this:

Tuesday: Brewery tours in New Hampshire during the daylight hours. This includes Cape Ann Brewing, Smuttynose Brewing, Redhook Brewing and Portsmouth Brewery. Okay so all are not in New Hampshire, but you know the saying. “If a bar (brewery) is on the right on side of the road…    …turn in.” In the evening it’s the Welcome Reception hosted by Harpoon Brewery.

Wednesday:Things start out with the Welcome and Keynote Address by Greg Koch of Stone Brewing. Then we’ll hit the BrewExpo followed by a bunch of seminars. I’ll have more on the seminars after we get back home and sober up. The seminars are broken up by some hospitalities. Hospitalites = beer and food. The evening has the Boston Beer Brewery Party in store for us. Guess who is hosting it? Just one guess.

Thursday:More seminars, a members meeting, more BrewExpo. More hospitalies. The evening? MBAANew England Cask Night hosted by Harpoon Brewery. Mmmm.

Friday:More seminars. No hospitalies – like I’ll need another beer. But in case I do, the late afternoon has the Closing Reception. Closing Reception = beer, food and friends. Later in the evening is the New England Brewers Night hosted by Harpoon Brewery. The perfect send-off by the great folks of New England.

Saturday:Catch a ridiculously early flight back to the Twin Cities and pick up our son and dogs from the Grandparents. Then we will begin reflecting back on the conference while breaking everyone of bad the habits that Grandpa and Grandma think is cute.

I’ll not have much time in Boston to blog, but I’ll send out a few tweets on Twitter now and then.

I gotta go, I need to finish the last glass or two of Classic American Pilsener left in the keg before we go.

Going to Brewing School

The letter starts, “I would like to inform you that you have been accepted into the Craft Brewers Apprenticeship Program, beginning January 18th, 2010.” At this point I stopped reading, grabbed a pint glass, and filled it up. The letter continues on how my acceptance is conditional upon the completion of a “Principles of Chemistry” course and upon the receipt of the down payment. The course wraps up the week of June 21st with a residential week in Sacramento, CA, otherwise the course is distance based. Upon completion of the course, I will be apprenticing at a yet-to-be-determined brewery for five weeks.

Next stop, Minnesota State Colleges & Universities for some chemistry. I am not shocked that my accounting degree did not provide all of the necessary background course-work, but it did provide a bunch, so at least no more calculus courses. This course will be quite different than my accounting degree I received from St. Cloud State University. For instance, I will not be pounding Keystone, Busch Light Draft, Special X, Mickeys or other macro-brewed beer this time. Yes, SCSU was prior to my craft-brewed beer “gateway” experience. Also, I no longer attempt to buy the biggest amount of beer for the smallest amount of cash.

A Brewer’s Dream

Welcome to March in Minnesota, this week was another of below zero temps. Yes, the temperature aided in getting me out of my “I have not adjusted to day light savings” tiredness, but I would rather swill the New Belgium version of below zero. I cannot blame all of my tiredness on the time change though. I’ve been having several nights like last night. I did sleep, but I woke up with about five ideas that were spinning through my dreams, which I promptly wrote down this morning. I find it quite weird how some of my best ideas come to me in my sleep. This does not always make for a good night’s rest, but it is neat to be able to have such vivid ideas that can be written down in much detail the following morning.

Now that Lucid Brewing is a member of the Brewers Association, my wife and I will be off to Boston for the Craft Brewers Conference in April. We are both excited for the event. My wife will be exposed to the dreamy world of craft brewing that keeps my mind going most nights. We will be visiting several Boston and New Hampshire breweries/brew pubs while in Boston. During our whirlwind visit we have absolutely no down time to speak of. By the time we are finished with the seminars, the expo, and other events I will have more haze in my head than a fully roused Bavarian weizen.

Progress on the actually brewery has been focused on the owner/brewer, known as me. I applied for brewing school and for a chemistry class. The chemistry class will aid the technical aspects of brewing and will make the yeast think I am not a complete stranger. The brewing school will be intense and may delay the opening of the brewery, but I feel that not going down this path is downright foolish. I applied for a brewer’s certificate program with an internship immediately following the classes. Let’s hope I am accepted to the program.

Oh yeah, progress has been made on the logo. The logo has been the primary focus of my weird dreams at night. Not by choice, it just is. My wife and I have created several sketch ideas and are working on finding a local artist to bring life to it. It is so cool to see all of the different sketches we have come up with. The evolution of our ideas is as interesting as it is demented. We both have come to realize we have a dark side that at times is coming out in our logo.