"Bionic Brewery" news and stories

Wow, the twentieth chapter of my journal, and still no distillery! Whodda thunkit? Well, it won't be much longer now. (Fingers Crossed, as well as toes, eyes, lips, legs... I must look like I have to pee REAL bad.) Anyway, I always loved to climb, as a kid, and then a teen, I would scale the highest trees in the neighborhood, always trying to get my head above the canopy. I only fell twice when branches broke. The first time was on a young willow tree when I was in 4th grade. I slightly twisted my ankle and learned that willows have weak branches for their size. I promptly went to the library and read up on trees and learned to identify them and which were strong or weak. I also moved on to climbing the sides of buildings, radio antennas, and anything else that was possibly climbable, and a few things that probably weren't. There were no rock-climbing areas near me, so I really got into tree-climbing, sometimes even using safety ropes, and what later became known as "Buildering," climbing buildings and other structures. The neighborhood cops got to know me by name, since they found me on roof-tops, telephone poles, flagpoles, light poles, street signs, tall fences, etc. on a regular basis.

The second time I had a tree branch break on me was when I was nineteen and I messed up my right knee real bad for the first time and was on crutches for awhile. (Note: Do not have keg parties in trees without safety harnesses. I learned the hard way.) As soon as I was healed I fell off the roof of a house during a thunderstorm. It had been real fun running along the long, low, slanted roof in the pouring rain and sliding down it; and then to bring yourself to a stop before you got to the edge. One time I tried to do a stunt from a cowboy movie and grab the gutter as I slid off, and do a drop kick onto a friend. Oops! There went my other knee. That was a great summer! As I got older I started working for Outward Bound and was always up in trees on challenge/ropes courses and got so comfortable I could make it through these airborne obstacle courses 30-60 feet in the air, blindfolded.

Every now and then over the years I would put in a stint in contracting and construction, thereby ending up on ladders and rooftops. Well, unsecured ladders started to scare the hell out of me real quick. I had a best friends father fall and break his neck when a ladder slipped. A fellow worker had a ladder slip and he broke both his wrists. I started getting really conservative when it came to ladder safety. Even when setting up access to a ropes course I always made sure the ladder was secured at the top so it couldn't slip. Even after all my years going up and down ladders I am still fearful. But I also stubborn and refuse to be intimidated or controlled by anything other than myself.

Wow, it's the first weekend of Autumn and in marshy areas and along ponds and rivers the leaves are starting to turn red. It's only the first hint of color in most places, but it's that time of year again. My favorite time of year. The nights have already gotten cool enough that I have had the heat on for more than a week and that wonderful smell of woodsmoke from my neighbors' fireplaces drifts by every now and then. Time sure flies. It's been almost ten months since I first met Michael, Joan, and Jody; my partners here in Winterport; and eight to nine months since we first started building the brewery & distillery. A Loooong nine months! I had hoped for a small distillery that would be up and running by Memorial Day. Then I hoped for a small brewery and distillery and hoped it would be up and running after nine months of gestation, but alas, that was not meant to be. Now we are ten times the size we originally planned and will grow even more.

As you may have noticed as I write my journal, things are speeding up here at our facility. I am starting to feel like an expectant papa once again. The feeling is almost indescribable; exciting and scary, filled with impatience and frustration, and every now and then a sense of wonder. We are now finishing the construction that had been put on hold way too many times, until we got certain parts and pieces of equipment. When we first got the brewery equipment we knew it was a good deal. What we didn't realize at first was how badly the equipment had been misused. It came to us third-hand. The first owners knew what they were doing, but the second owners were clueless. Everything that could be broken, was. Fixing it all has cost almost as much as the original price. You wouldn't believe how many hours have been spent on it as well. We have been building, rebuilding, cleaning, polishing, taking things apart, repairing them, and putting them back together. Manuals were ordered, read, studied, and memorized. I see the disaster of equipment in all stages of use and misuse, then partly dismantled and in a state of repair; littering what was once the beautiful and clean home of my future brewery/distillery. Finally it is all slowly coming together.

Do you remember the 70's TV Show "The Six Million Dollar Man"? At the start of each episode they say "Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster." Well that's what's going on here. I feel like we are team of surgeons, or maybe mad scientists... re-building a living being from the horribly injured wreck of what once was great. Sometimes the surgery is detailed. Piecing together tiny wires, resistors, connections. Other times you reach for the biggest hammer or wrench you can find. We are discarding old and outdated parts of the brewery and replace them with the best, cutting edge, adding new technology. Computers, sensors, probes, you name it. We will rebuild it. Better than it was before. Better, Stronger, Faster. It will be The Bionic Brewery! (And hopefully not cost six million dollars!)

Here and after the jump are photos of the first part of installing the steel vent pipe. It was heavy as hell, and I had to lift it into place by hand as the brew kettle was jockeyed into position, that had to be exact to within a 1/2 inch so it could connect to the pre-cut and fitted pipes that attach to other pieces of equipment.