The warehouse moved a bit forward this week when the insulation for the cold room was completed.  Mike, the concrete guy, graded the front of the  building for the soon to be added front patio and I began putting the first coat of paint on the front due to our painter being MIA.  Regardless, I am now the painter and over the course of the next few weeks (weather permitting) will be putting a nice coat of paint on the building.  

The interior is moving along and this next week the two carpenters on the job will continue framing out the first floor and a stairway to heaven.  Almost all of our doors are in except one and we are expecting windows to come in this next week.  But we are still a long ways away from installing them.  We are hoping to be completed with framing by the 3rd week of December.  

Last Friday, our brewer and I attended the Stlhops  3rd Anniversary party at the Schlafly taproom.  We were both very happy with the way our American Brown and British Bitter poured.  Also I had the good fortune to personally meet Phil from Perennial and David from UCBC and was able to spend more time with Steve from Second Shift Brewery.  It’s a great time to be a St. Louis beer drinker.  It is a very warm environment in St. Louis among the micro-brewery owners and breweries.  We all get it.  We are actually in this together.  

If by chance you are reading this on Thanksgiving, crack open a beer and have a Happy Thanksgiving.  If you are reading this after Thanksgiving, crack open a beer and have a happy day.  

Jim, our lead carpenter, has been working at the warehouse since the first week of October and this past week we had another Carpenter,  Matthias added who will be with us the next two weeks as we begin framing out the tasting room and the time travel chamber.  

This coming week we will begin work on our Beer garden which will span the 60 feet across the front of our building.  Mike, you have seen him before in the literary masterpiece “It’s Concrete” will be back on Monday to begin tearing up the front for our new patio.  

We are also in the process (attempting) to get the front of the building painted. Unfortunately, our painter has gone MIA and well, time is running out to get it painted before the winter.  My apologies to the neighbors for the delay.  We are definitely moving forward with work on the building but as Jim’s (carpenter) wife said, “It looks like crap.”  Well, small victories have been won but mostly we are still losing.  That is until it gets a coat of paint. 

On another really exciting wonderful note, we found out we get the joy of breaking up a good 1500-2000 square feet of concrete in our main brewery space as our current floor will not hold (at least long term) the weight of the tanks.  This is obviously great news!  When people ask me what opening a business is like, I tell them it’s like being Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke when George Kennedy and him go fisticuffs in the common area at the prison.  In the scene, Paul Newman never quite succumbs to the smack down George Kennedy continuously delivers.  He keeps getting back up and fighting until even the giant George Kennedy grows tired of pummeling him and wanders away.  He then goes on to earn the respect of his fellow prisoners and most importantly he eats 60 eggs,  which fortunately isn’t anything like owning a business.  So the only advice I have is to forge ahead with whatever you really want to accomplish.  Nothing happens in a day and nothing easily accomplished seems to be worthwhile.  But this you already know, I am really just reminding myself.  

We are also in the process of filling out all of the necessary paperwork for the TTB as if we don’t get it filed soon we may be in the odd predicament of having a brewery without the ability to produce beer.  Legally that is and that legal requirement is pretty important these days.  

Keep your nose in the glass and your ear to the ground... but not at the same time.  

I remember the first experience I had with concrete was at Ted Drewes and though I think it would be interesting to fill up the brewery floor and ramp to the cold room with Ted Drewes it falls into the category of jokes that are too expensive to pull off.  So I am sorry to report we went with the standard concrete and nothing melted.  As a result, we will soon be able to walk up a brand new ramp and over the new floors that our restrooms, office, mop room, bar, shower (with beer tap) and time travel chamber will rest upon. (Only one of those is not true and you probably think it is the time travel chamber.)

I have a great admiration for the skilled trades which have built our great country.  Though I admit, at times, I have been less than enthralled with many final products from the hacks out there.  But they make appreciating the many skilled conscientious laborers out there easy to spot.  Mike, our concrete man falls into that category. He makes moving massive amounts of concrete into tight crevasses look easy.  Easy enough that one watching would think, “Hey, I could do that.” But you couldn’t, not even close.  The great thing about Concrete guys is they work fast.  In fact, of all the trades I have encountered, it’s the concrete guys that work the quickest.  Which led me to a very creative idea for the micro-brewery.  What if we added something to our beer so that it hardened after say 15 minutes unless of course it was consumed.  How ‘bout 15 seconds.  Could you imagine the speed at which people would consume our beers!  The possibilities are both endless on all levels and unfortunately tragic on even more levels.  So let’s move on.  

This week we are beginning the framing of the tasting room.  It is just going to be an average, run of the mill kind of place.  The kind of place that looks like it could be in any strip mall in America or would fit real nicely next to one of those neighborhood Applebees or maybe even one of those Denny’s where you can get a “Moon over my Hammy.”  I know that because I have had it...and I really like it.  Well, the name that is.   The tasting room will mostly be a comfortable boring concept focusing on lots of flair, employees that wear silly shirts and say things like, “Hurry back to our chain restaurant” even when they don’t mean it.  I have worked hard to over-design it with lots of carefully placed posters (framed of course).  I sincerely hope, as do most chain restaurants, that it will be a completely forgettable experience leaving you wondering just exactly where you just were drinking.  I have worked quite diligently to find the right cross between Cracker Barrel and Cheesecake Factory.  Sure some people say, I spent time over seas last year “researching this project” but they would be wrong.  I was over cheese and you can do that right here in St. Louis at the Cheesecake factory.  

Please note: do not take offense if you like any of the previous mentioned chains.  I haven’t eaten at any of them in years and am no authority on their quality of food except of course the “Moon over my Hammy” which I was fond of as it was a much needed refueling after a previous late night drink research project during my doctoral studies.  Which occurred, when I was trying to date a doctor a few years back.  Fail.jake.com.   I am simply and unapologetically (this is not true because I apologized: see first sentence this paragraph) a firm believer in the small business and when I do go out, I go out to places where the owner is busting a move and putting in long hours trying to keep his/her establishment standards as close to perfect as they can.  Knowing the one truism:  Perfection cannot be attained but the endless pursuit of it is incredibly worthwhile.  We have a great city and there are many passionate small business owners out there.  Find them and support the ones that are making St. Louis a better place to live.  If I wasn’t cashing in my retirement, had a job that actually paid me and wasn’t living with my parents to save money while I try to get this micro-brewery open, you’d better believe I would be out blowing my paycheck at a St. Louis owned bar or restaurant.  

Fairly soon, within the next 10 years, I am going to have the chap that will quite soon (next year) become our brewer write something intellectually stimulating for the beer crowd which so far has probably been undoubtedly a bit let down by this blog.  The truth is that neither of us can get the time back associated with reading or writing this blog.  Not even, Carl.  (See: and so it begins blog entry) .