More waiting!

I keep telling people... "If I wanted to open a sewing machine repair shop, I would have been in business for a year now." But anytime you involve alcohol, Uncle Sam wants to make sure that he's going to get every penny that's coming to him. And in doing that, slows down the whole process. Damnit.

Construction is 99% done. The gas will be hooked up on Monday. Everything is looking good. I'll be brewing some test batches on the system next week (and by test batches, I mean never to be sold or given away. Probably be destroyed after taste panels). Money is getting tight now and I am no longer affiliated with 75th Street Brewery. So I'm either unemployed or fully self-employed depending on how you look at it. But at least it's all mine.

I'm really thinking that I'll have beer for sale in either Kansas or Missouri by the end of August. It's crazy to think that this all started almost a year ago with me and my wife sitting around our sons playskool plastic table, drinking beer and getting fired up about the idea of starting our own brewery. But I've never really been known to be sane, and until my dieing days I'll say that my wife followed my insanity of her own free will.

Are you ready Kansas City? Let's do this!

Now it's for real

Another month, another update. That seems to be my usual rate of posting stuff here. Construction started this week. The plumber was in installing the drains and running new gas line. All the other construction should be started on Monday. Looks like I'm going to have myself a brewery before the end of July. Now I just need to get all of the licensure and cut through all the red tape. Oh yeah! And I guess I'll need to start brewing some beer.

The ball is rolling now

I talked to the bank and they're saying that the extension of my loan has been approved and I should be able to sign after the holiday weekend. As soon as I leave the bank, I'll call the contractor and tell him that I'm ready to move forward. The current time frame that he's giving me is two weeks from the start of construction.

My brewhouse came in! There was a problem ordering the fermenters, but that's cleared up and they should be arriving in 1-2 weeks. Everything is finally starting to come together. Current estimate for the beer to hit the shelves is July sometime. Of course, last time I tried to pick a date for my beer to be out, I came up with February. Hopefully that won't be the case again.

While at the Craft Brewers Conference in Boston, I went to a seminar about opening a brewery. The owner's first lesson was "Opening a brewery takes three times longer than you think it will, and costs twice as much." Yep, that's what I've been noticing too.

Recent updates

So, I've been pretty bad about updating. So here's the scoops

1. I've added twitter to the blog so I can do the micro blog thing more often and keep everyone more up to date
2. I have to move my brewery location. It's okay though, it's just to the suite right next to where I was before. I'll save a lot of money on construction this way.
3. I'm waiting for the bank (again... crap) to extend my loan. Even with the savings, construction costs are really high and I need some more money to start this up.
4. I spent all of last week in Boston at the Craft Brewers Conference. I learned a lot of interesting things and got to reconnect with some old Harpoon friends. I also have fun stories about fellow brewers and how well they handle large amounts of alcohol.
5. I'll be representing the 75th Street Brewery at the Parkville brew fest this Saturday, but I'll gladly talk to anyone about the Doodle Brewing Company if I'm not busy pouring beers for everyone.

There's probably more, but hopefully this is good enough to start off the new month.

Slow going

I promise I'm doing stuff. I expected to find some various constraints and problems so I buffered some time into my estimated opening. Once again, I'm poised with a phone full of numbers to call as soon as the architect finishes the plans and the city grants the building permits. A friend at 75th street came in and took some pre work pictures that I'll hopefully get to put up sometime so we can have a walk down memory lane in the future.

Thanks to everyone who's stopped and talked to me about the brewery (or had to listen to me talk about it). Support like that is a huge inspiration.

And we're off...

As of Monday, I'm the proud owner of a pretty nice chunk of debt.

As of this morning, I'm the proud leasee of a property in Liberty.

So, obviously, I'm spending all my free time making phone calls, phone calls, emails and phone calls. I'm not complaining though. In fact, it's actually kind of fun to orchestrate the chaos into what sounds like a elementary school recorder band. Maybe I just need to open breweries for a living, or conduct elementary school recorder bands.

On second thought, what's the fun of creating a brewery if you don't get to enjoy the final product? And also, I really don't like recorders.

At last... (hopefully)

First of all, thanks to everyone who's emailed, called or personally talked to me and offered their support for my brewery. After Dan Ryan at
gonemild.com put out the word, it spread pretty quickly. Many many emails offering support, including some from the city of Liberty administrators (Awesome by the way. I'm not sure if KC does this kind of thing, but Liberty officials have pretty much accepted me with open arms before I was ever really doing any business in Liberty. To me that says, "Choosing Liberty was a great choice. And it's getting better all the time. Taco's are good." I'm not sure why that last part got in there, but taco's are good. I need to stop this sidenote before it gets anymore out of control).

And now...

Without further sidenotes...

The bank finally called me today and told me that that they have "docs". I have an appointment at 10 AM on Monday to go in and sign all the paperwork necessary. It's kind of nice to start the mad dash on a Monday that I have off.

10 AM: Sign paperwork
11 AM: Call leasing agent and set up appointment to sign lease
11:30 AM: Lunch. Buffalo Wild Wings. 12 Wings, Spicy Garlic, big glass of Boulevard Pale Ale

Afternoon calls:
Brewhouse manufacturer
Fermenter manufacturer
Local business that sells walk in freezers
Contracter to schedule remodeling of brewery
Webmaster to set up email list
And probably many more.

All I can say is... I'm ready.
The time for worrying about this or that is done. I've come to terms with everything that I'm going to be doing. Win-lose, success-failure, Spicy Garlic-Asian Zing, I'm just... Ready