Taps Handled.

I built our tap handles this weekend up in my hometown of Redlands. It was a fun project. We stopped by Inland Empire Brewing Company on our way to pick up some red oak out in Fontana... that turned into a long, long stop but it was cool. They had some great beers and Ryan was an awesome guy.

Best Laid Plans.

We started out with an idea of what we wanted to end up with. The process to get to what we wanted turned out to be a little more difficult than expected. 

Legs for Days.

One thing I learned is that Red Oak (Quercas Rubra) is not a very forgiving wood and brass is not a very hard metal. 

Drilling Out.

We had to drill out the hole for our tap fitting 5/8 of an inch because the brass would not bite into the oak. Next time I am skipping the brass insert and going with a steel screw plus silver ferrule.

Everything In It's Right Place.

Weights.

Because of this we had to take a more creative approach. Two weights keeping our fittings in place while our glue does it's thing.

The Demon Cutter.

Attempting to not lose a finger on the table saw. Easier said than done.

Making Face.

Sink a Dowel, Make 'em Howl.

Not Too Shabby.

"I like to work with my hands."

Semi-Finished Tap Handles.

Now all that is left is figuring out how to get our logo and name of beers onto each of the tap handles. My current idea is screen printing or stenciling them on. I'll be sure to let you know how that goes.

Pint Glasses, Tap Handles and Growlers... Oh My!

Willi Becher.

As we come into the final stretch before our opening, much time has been spent working on getting the Hess Brewing glassware and tap handles figured out. Rather than go with the traditional 'pint' glass, and as fans of the Honest Pint movement Mike decided to go with a glass that would hold a full pour, called a Willi Becher - like the one above. The one we're likely to go with is 21.5 ounces to the top. We also like it because (to be perfectly honest with you) it has a silly name. Now the trouble is figuring out where to get it screen printed / sand blasted with our logo and a fill-mark line at a .5L that won't cost us an arm and a leg.

Although we won't have them on opening day, what do you think about having some Belgian tulips or snifters for our Ex Umbris or Amplus Acerba?

Terrible, Terrible Artwork.

For our tap handles we're probably going to go the custom route. Skubic has been working hard and spending many hours figuring out how to go about making them... right now he's thinking of using Wenge as the wooden base then screen printing / stencil spray painting on the logos / labels. The arm is the hangup now, on the one hand we can go with wood, on the other, Mike may try and hone his metalworking skills and make a wrought iron handle...TBD!

Classic.

This is the growler we are going to be going with. Greg, Mike's brother bought him one of these for Christmas a few years back and it's been a favorite for bringing homebrew around to friend's houses. We love the big pour mouth and monster handle. It's from koch-usa. We think you'll love the look of this growler too, so bulky yet stylish too. It's going to look even better with our Hess Brew logo screened on the front!

Cold Room Set-Up

We finally got around to putting the cold room together. We got a little side tracked after finding out that we are going to have to install two more sinks in our space. Do you think it is a coincidence that the acronym for the Department of Health is D'OH!? I find it highly suspicious. Highly.

Anyways, we have to install a floor sink, so we had about six plumbers come in last week to give us estimates on how much it is going to cost to install one and it looks like it's going to be in the $1,250 to $2,700 range. The deal with a floor sink is when serving any sort of food or beverage to citizens of San Diego we need to have an air gap between the plumbing and the sewer, that way we don't get sewage backing up back into our sinks. A little something called "Backflow Prevention."

The cold room was really easy to assemble, it was like a gigantic piece of IKEA furniture. Just needed a bit of elbow grease to lug the pieces around into the correct position and a little deductive reasoning to determine where the ceiling pieces and voilà! Instant* cold room.

Here are some semi-timelapsed photos from the build out:

*Instant being about 4 hours + a 14 hour round trip to Phoenix.