The final push...

Work continues apace at Hopcraft towers with the lid for the copper being finished (well, apart from the hinges and handles), the steelwork being painted and hazard taped, the premasher amended to make it more efficient and various bits of stainless moved around to their final destinations to check it all fits where it should.

This week we hope to have finished the woodwork and maybe have the gas lines for the copper installed as well as, Bacchus permitting, the stainless pipework for the hotside underway.  Once that's done we really are on the home strait and so, that said, I'd better get to ordering the Saccharometers!

Here are the customary badly-posed photos you've come to expect...

The future conditioning room is tested out for size (and the tanks fit perfectly!)

Another view of the CTs and, far right, one of the CIP tanks.

Our stash of Weyermann speciality malts currently being used for the testbrews we're churning out.

The cask washer is almost ready for action.

The freshly-varnished lid on the copper with sprayball in situ.

Gazza busy (!) painting the uprights.

FV1 after yet another clean... 

A bit late, but....

... the first outing of one of our beers (apart from at the Wheatsheaf tastings) is Bad Monkey which may still be on at the Gloucester Beer Festival today; sorry, but the newsworthyness of this slipped my mind until now!

It's an amber brew with plenty of interesting German malts and lots of lovely Columbus, Citra and Galaxy hops.

UPDATE - Bad Monkey was one of the first beers to run out on Friday afternoon!  Cheers to everyone who came and drank it, if you want to feedback any opinions (good or bad!) then send them to Gazza@hopcraftbrewing.co.uk.  Cheers!

It certainly is...

We have gas!!!

We've finally been connected to mains gas and, so, once the copper's gas jets are connected up, we will be able to boil water and therefore begin caustic washing our vessels....

Suddenly it's all coming together.

Yes, we have gas!!!

First testbrew at the unit!

Big news is that we are brewing today at the unit! Not on the main kit yet (although we are promised gas this week and our hotside pipework is being priced up) but on the trusty 16 gallon pilot kit. 

It's our Black IPA "Abrek" with citra, galaxy and mosaic, named after one of the first Russian monkeys into space. So now you know...

The first brew at the unit... on the pilot kit!

Mashing in Abrek Black IPA

Gazza with the "brewery stick"...

316 Stainless - ready for action!

Well, sort of... we've been cleaning all week and are happy to report that our copper is 95% ready for brewing and FVs 1 and 2 are as shiny as shiny things (3 and 4 still need cleaning, but that's the two big ones done...!)

We're still being promised gas next week and the guys are visiting to work out our hot-side stainless pipework so, once that's all done, we're getting very close indeed.

So, as is now traditional, here are the customary photos to show what we've been doing this week!

FV2 in all it's stainless splendour after a damn good scrubbing!

 

Gazza doing said scrubbing inside FV2...

The steps into the void... (inside the copper)

  

Gazza inside the copper.

And again, trying to get 20 years' worth of carbon off the bottom!

Tom's hard work on the copper shows - before (right) and after (left) nylon sanding!

And finally, our "waste hopper" in use!  This little contraption is used to dump the FVs into then it's wheeled across to the drain where the contents are disgorged!

Two Lowara pumps in the van.

We've just driven out to the wilds of East Yorkshire to pick up 2 huge Lowara pumps for our mash and copper streams. Never used, still bolted to the delivery frames! £100 the two...

One of the monsters in the van!

Not far off now....

Last week saw progress in many areas of the brewery setup, including - 

• We now have a working water main,
• We cleaned out the Mash Tun and jetwashed it's filter plates,
• All FV's were jetwashed and found to have immaculate stainless inside,
• "Tom's shed" (the grain hopper) was completed,
• The premasher has been finished apart from the hot liquor pipework,
• Said hot liquor pipework has been designed,
• Two Lowara pumps have been sourced,
• The steelwork has finally been completed along with the handrails and kickboards,
• Marine ply lids have been made for the Mash Tun and Copper.

We're still waiting on the gas board to supply a meter, but once that's done we have the gas burners ready to install under the copper.  We are off to get the pumps this week and also see a man about the "hot side" pipework and so, once these two things are done, we are almost in a position to brew!

So, the light at the tunnel's end is getting closer.... stay tuned for more developments this week!

Here are some photos from last week to illustrate what happened...

Gazza with the just-scrubbed and polished HLT.

The newly-made Malt Hopper, or Tom's Shed as it it's now called...

The freshly-jetwashed Fermenters drying out.

Our new mash hopper and sparklingly clean HLT.

Not bad for a 40 year-old tank, eh?  Fresh from it's jetwash, FV1 sparkles!  The paddles will be taken out and saved for possible future use in stronger beers when agitation of yeast is required.

Inside the Mash tun, once again immaculate Stainless 316!

The newly made Marine ply lid on the copper being varnished with FV1 and 2 behind.

Gazza with the newly-made premasher and Mash tun.

Progress Update - 4th March.

Things have moved on a lot in the past couple of weeks and it's beginning to look like the finish line is in sight albeit obscured a bit by cleaning and British Gas!

So, here's what we have achieved recently...

• We have jetwashed 75% of the vessels and floor with the remaining Conditioning Tanks and Mash Tun are in the queue for tomorrow,
• The gas board have finally admitted we don't have a meter and are in process of setting us up so we can have one (they insisted we had a meter until an engineer came out and discovered the cap on the gas main was last touched 15 years ago),
• The gas jets for the copper are ready to be installed as are the insulation chimney bricks,
• Electrics are in process of being upgraded, 
• We've bought two second-hand Lowara vertical pumps for the mash and wort streams,
• The Plate Cooler has arrived,
• We've done a pipework diagram for the hot side which we will take to Hereford this week to hopefully be made / sourced,
• The drain is working a treat!,
• A cold store container has been located,
• We have the temperature control units and chiller units for FV cooling,
• The cask washer is almost ready for testing,
• Testbrewing has been a huge success with the beers getting good reviews all round.

I'm sure there is more but that'll do for today!  Hopefully this week will see yet more progress towards being able to brew and we'll keep you updated as frequently as possible.

Testbrew launch night!

With three testbrews in the bag we thought it was time to see what the general public thought of our brews thus far and so we organised a "tap takeover" at the Wheatsheaf, Llantrisant on Thursday 28th February.

On the bar were three versions of the bitter; one "as-is" with no dry hopping, one dry-hopped with Bobek and one with Marynka, accompanied by our hoppy amber beer "Bad Monkey" and "Mosaic" which had been hopped in the FV with the luscious-smelling new US hop Mosaic, hence the name.

The evening was a great success and we garnered a good amount of feedback from beer lovers and "normal" drinkers alike.  The general consensus was that Bobek suited the bitter best (and a touch less colour), whilst Mosaic went down a storm with everyone and we sold the entire batch (13.5 gallons) in around 7 hours!  The incredible aroma of Mosaic was the star of the show - strawberries, peaches, pineapple - and we're hopeful we can reproduce that scaled up a bit.  Overall we were very happy with the way all the beers were received, so cheers everyone for showing up and drinking them!

Now to make the "big" brewery work and produce some fantastic beers...  thanks to everyone for the support and we hope to repay you in great beer soon.

The calm before opening!  A bit of quality control...

The first pint pulled!

Cheers to us...

A bit more quality control on the Mosaic, just in case there's something wrong with it.

Coffee Stout... And the release of our first 3 testbrews.

We're brewing a coffee stout today and also, from 17:00 tonight at the Wheatsheaf, Llantrisant, you can come taste 3 versions of our bitter, Mosaic pale ale and Bad Monkey, a hoppy amber.

The bar recently...

An ode to drainage channels.

Drainage has been the bane of our lives for the past three weeks due to matters completely beyond our control, and sometimes it seemed we'd never get a working drain....

Originally we had permission to dig a channel along the length of the brewery floor to empty into the drain out front of the unit; bish bosh, sorted.  We then discovered that this is a storm drain and can't be used for waste (it's rainwater only) and so we needed to vent our waste into the manhole out back which has involved digging an extra 15 metres of channel through rock-hard reinforced concrete, knocking a hole in the wall, digging up the path out back and finally routing it into the main drain.... put it this way, NEVER AGAIN will any of us ever build a drain!

Owing to the weight of the steelwork and vessels, raising the floor around a channel wasn't an option so we had to cut it into the reinforced concrete floor with jackhammers, smaller electric chisels, manual chisels and suchlike.  Now, after almost a month, we finally have a working drain which is concreted in and looking good!  And believe me, we tested it before concreting it in.

Apologies for labouring such a tedious aspect of the brewery when we're sure all you want to see are our smiling faces peeping from FV's and other brewing vessels, but to understand how difficult these seemingly small aspects of brewery setup are is to grasp just why it takes so long for a brewery to actually begin production...

Tom concreting in the channel and pipework.

Our sump, a miracle of ingenuity!

Gazza concreting in the channel.

Tom and Turk demolish the path out back.

Turk in the sewer... the lengths you have to go to!

Painting the floor and other more exciting things.

Bet it's not that colour for long...

The excitement continues unabated in Pontyclun as we've now painted the brewing level floor a lovely shade of "British Racing green" - it looks nothing like the photo in real life, but we're sure you can imagine it's verdant glow.

In other non-paint related news, the gas burners for the copper should be plumbed in this week along with, we hope, our lovely (and very expensive) new plate cooler which will mean - once a small amount of pipework is done - that we can think about brewing some beer!

Before that, however, we've got to give everything a mammoth clean and caustic wash, fix up the remaining handrails, plumb in the water, commission the cask washer, order said casks, get a palletload of malt, buy some saccharometers and a million other things which are required to be done before we can make beer.

So, the moral of the story so far is that if anyone tells you setting up a brewery is easy you have an absolute moral right  - nay, obligation - to laugh in their face.  Honestly, you do.  Just send them over to us and we'll do the same.

Work continues...

The mammoth task of creating a working brewery continues apace and, thankfully, it's now looking more like it could actually be used to make beer!

The drainage is close to completion, the steelwork painted in undercoat ready for daubing with various luminous colours, the walls are in process of being clad with spray-down plastic and various technical things have been accomplished or are in process - cask washer, copper gas supply and jets, FV temperature control, CT cladding, extra hop supplies... you get the idea.

So, we're still hopeful that we can begin brewing in a couple of weeks, although this could slip a touch as there is still massive amounts to be done... watch this space!

The HLT and MT with newly-painted steelwork!

Welding one of the support beams

More testbrewing!

We did so much yesterday in the brewery - wipe clean walls nearly done, drainage almost sorted, steelwork undercoated, floor finished - that it's time to try out a few more recipes from the stack waiting to be brewed, maybe even two depending on time!

The spray-down wall cladding going on.

Testbrewing !!!

Yes, you read that right.

We are testbrewing.

Not on the big plant, mind, but on Tom's dinky little 0.5BBL kit where we've already done our first brew and hope to do a couple more next week.  Whether these will be actually sold over the bar in the Wheatsheaf, Llantrisant (where we brewed them), or more prosaically tasted then dumped isn't yet known, but whatever happens we're happy to be trying out a couple of recipes we've got lined up for you just to see how they come together in "real life"!

So, just to prove it, here's some photos of us messing about with the pilot plant which will, once we're all sorted out, be installed in the unit and utilised for more testbrewing and also to produce some extreme beers which even we don't think we can sell a full brew of!

Back of an envelope indeed!

Hops, and plenty of 'em.

That protofloc worked well...

The SO5 kicks into action.

Hard graft....

Gazza, being someone who has been used to swanning around in company cars, sitting at keyboards and generally doing f-all for the last 20 years, is getting a rude awakening at present as we jackhammer a drainage channel into the concrete floor at the brewery which, predictably, seems to be made of super-hard concrete reinforced with way too many steel rods... it wasn't a Friday afternoon "bodgett and scarper" obviously!

These photos show the progress being made recently, and now the steelwork is almost all painted too it's beginning to look vaguely like a brewery in there now... next, once the drainage channel is completed, it's time to thoroughly clean the kit, assemble the copper's gas jets and insulation, wrap the CTs in beer line and then lag them ready for temperature control, construct the cask washer, make a malt hopper and pre-masher, pipe up the vessels... you get the idea!

At least it's all coming together now and we're hoping to be in a position to brew in a couple of weeks time.

Tom and Turk get to work on the Channel.

Work in progress...

Gazza gets stuck in.

Turk and Gazza tackle the concrete.

Grinding off one of the many steel wires.

Almost done !!!