Over the weekend we had a very busy time at the Winery. Saturday night was the culmination of a month of work by several dozen people from the area who entered in our Gingerbread House competition for charity. We have had several classes a week on how to make and decorate gingerbread houses and ended up with almost thirty contestants. There were five categories: Professional, Under 17, Traditional, Historical, and Fantasy. There were some absolutely wonderful creations, and I was surprised at the quality of all the entries, especially the fact that some of the best were by people who had never done this before.

Sunday night I went to a Sunday Night Cocktail event hosted by my friend and award winning mixologist, Lydia Reismueller, formerly of the speakeasy style cocktail bar PDT and restaurant/cocktail bar Elettaria in NYC. Lydia has been having these Sunday events for the past two months at the Westcot Forge restaurant in Blue Hill, ME and they have been a big success. I tried a few of her new creations and said my good-bye's for the season, as she heads off to travel the world until March with her chef boyfriend. I'm already looking forward to when she starts up the Cocktail Sundays again next Spring when she comes back to manage one of the excellent, local, organic farms.

This week went by very quickly, even though it was a six day week for me. On Monday I went in to the winery even though we were closed, so i could do some paperwork and research. The boiler guys showed up as well, to do some more work. They had to re-do a section of pipe work near the boiler where they hadn't tightened down the pipes enough and there were steam leaks. Tuesday we were closed as well for Veterans Day, but I was back again, doing more research and paperwork. I had the place to myself for most of the day and it was nice and quiet.

On Wednesday, just before lunch time, the delivery of 6,000 pounds of peach puree arrived. Twelve drums, each weighing 500 pounds, stacked four to a pallet. As the first pallet load was being lowered on the gate lift to the ground, it started teetering, and almost fell. But made it semi-safely to the ground. The second load got out of control and came crashing down onto the asphalt of the parking lot. As you can see they were torn open, dented and partially crushed like soda cans. Luckily, the puree is packed aseptically inside very thick Mylar bags that have a breaking strength in the thousands of pounds. So with a huge struggle we were able to right the drums and manhandle them down into the winery. It took us almost two hours to get the twelve drums down the ramp and into the basement. Leaving us sore and aching in every joint.

Then on Thursday the boiler guys came to correct some other minor problems, and we powered up the boiler. Everything seemed fine, except for the cloud of smoke wafting along the ceiling. As the steam pipes heated up for the first time any oils accumulated on their surface burned off. So we walked around in a haze, and daze, choking on oily smoke. We set up some exhaust fans to vent the winery, and turned on the big exhaust blower in the distillery, which helped a lot. Then we started to have some more problems with the boiler shutting down due to pressure problems, so we spent the day re-thinking the installation. Friday and Saturday were spent adding new sections of pipe for the condensate return to the boiler. Hopefully this will be the last hurdle in the boiler drama, and then we can make beer. I REALLY need a tasty brew right now!

Last week was a busy, busy, week. Lots of hard work that brought us much closer to our goals of opening the brewery and distillery. At the end of the week I came down with a mild version of the flu, thanks to the open and sharing nature of my friends and partners. Finally on Saturday morning I ground to a halt at work. I was feeling pretty under the weather, not so bad I couldn't work, but my mental faculties were slowed down.

I decided to do some photography of bottles of the very rare, and out of production, Tanqueray Malacca Gin in my collection; to send to a potential customer who also collects rare spirits. As I was putting things away and moving cases around, I stumbled back in forth in a daze. Then due to my clumsiness a case of empty wine bottles fell from the top of a pallet onto my big toe. Usually I have pretty fast reactions and can catch falling stuff, or at least slow down or break their fall. This time I didn't even notice it until a few seconds after it landed, directly with the pointy corner of the case in the middle of my toe. It didn't hurt at first. Mike was near me hunting for some tools and I pointed out the case balancing on it's corner, sitting on my toe. He just shook his head and shrugged with a rueful smile. I knew it should hurt, but my reflexes were so slowed down that I felt nothing.

I picked up the case and heaved it over my head and back onto the pallet. Grumbling under my breath that this was going to hurt like hell. I started to make my way up the stairs to my office and as I did so my toe started to get warm, then hot, then to burn unmercifully. By the time I hobbled up the stairs and sat down at my desk in the distillery my toe really, really hurt!

Over the weekend Mike and I finished most of the pipe work for the brewery and distillery chilling system. All we now need is the pump and that project is done. I mentioned before, but we are using a 500 gallon wine chilling and clearing tank as the reservoir and cooling system for our chilling system. We had it already available, Mike had picked it up awhile ago very inexpensively, and it was just sitting there taking up room and unused. So being thrifty, we decided to make it useful once again. We ran PVC piping many months ago along the walls of the brewery / distillery; going to all the fermenters, the copper spirits still, and locations of future stills. Then we connected the brewery chilling plate and transfer system for the hot wort to the network. Finally we ran the pipe along the ceiling of the basement to the cooling tank, and prepped everything for installing the pump.

You can see some photos of this in the galleries to come. Also I show a few of our 500 gallon wine fermenting and storage tanks. The reason I'm show them is to focus on the PVC piping along the ceiling above the tanks. This is for venting CO2 from the tanks, to the outside. Each tank that has active fermentation still in progress has tubing that comes out of an airlock and goes into the CO2 vent pipe. This way the basement winery doesn't become filled with CO2, killing us. That just wouldn't be fun.

Early Monday morning the boiler guys came to start the boiler installation. We are usually closed Sundays and Mondays, but Mike went in to work with them; while I was off down to Rockport, near where I used to live in Rockland / Owls Head, to meet with a Steel Work company to discuss my latest project. The boiler guys spent several days working on the installation, and will come back next week to finish it.

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.

Well, most folks have a dry job, but mine is wet. Making, serving, and enjoying fine libations is a hard and trying occupation. If you are one of those dry types, it just isn't your calling. Me, I like it wet. I lived near a dry county once. I shudder to think about it. Yup, I like it wet. But in some things moderation is key. Until recently I wondered what those things were. Now I know. Sometimes it can be too wet. I guess it's time to finally break out the umbrellas.

It's been a dreary week here in Winterport, Maine. Actually a dreary summer is more like it. The weather has been the same as far back as mid-June. Hazy, rainy, humid, hot, wet, yuch. I'm normally like a duck and love wet weather, but some times it gets to be Just Too Much.

One day last week the weather broke and it was a Beautiful Maine Summer Day. Yes, it has to be capitalized. Warm with Cool Breezes, Sunny, Occasional Puffy Clouds Decorating the Skies, the Smell of Green Growing Things All Around and the Scent of the Ocean on the Wind. Not too hot, not too cool, as Goldilocks said, "This is just right." Well, that lasted all of one day.

Building our brewery and distillery is much like building a wall. first you have to lay the foundation. Then the first course of bricks, then corners, edging, etc. If you goof up in one area, it affects the whole thing. So you have to tear it down, correct the problem or make the change, and start all over again. As you can see above, we are taking apart every piece of equipment, one by one, and cleaning sterilizing them, replacing any wort out or broken parts, and putting them back together.That specific piece of equipment with the parts laid out on the floor is the diverter and chilling plate. It's the arteries and veins of the whole brewery. By placing the elbow joints in various configurations we can send water or wort (freshly brewed but unfermented beer) to any piece of equipment such as fermenters, filters etc. and heat or chill it.

Well, this has been an intense week. As I mentioned, a few weeks ago we got out federal brewery permit, but the state permit is the one that makes us official. On Tuesday the state inspector came, and even though we still have lots of work to do before we can start brewing, we now have our state and federal brewery permits and are an official micro-brewery. Hooray! Now we just have to locate the rest of the equipment we need and finish putting it all together. Then we can work on recipes for our beers.

Once the brewery is up and running it won't take much at all to finish off the distillery. Of course the simple, small distillery I imagined at the start of this whole journey, is nothing compared to what is in store. One small still is rapidly becoming two, then three...

As I wrote last week I had several friends in town on vacation. We traveled all over and ate our way up and down the coast. I ditched the camera for awhile so I could stay in the moment so I can't show you most of our meals, except for one day when we stuffed ourselves on local specialties. Maine Lobsters and Glidden Point & Pemmaquid oysters. I had a specific request from Joe Distefano for raw oysters, a favorite of his in hot weather, and it sure has been warm out the past week.

So we took off on a drive to get the best and freshest. We went direct to Glidden Point Oyster Sea Farm and picked up a dozen fresh Glidden Point's that had been in the water just a few hours earlier. Then to Oyster River Lobster Company for some Pemmaquid oysters and eight 1.5 lb. soft shell lobsters. (Remember Oyster River Lobster Company? I wrote about their famous Blue Lobster and their amazing Lobster Pies.)

When we got home I shucked the oysters and steamed up the lobsters and we set down to a feast. Just a word of warning. If you take several guys away from their girlfriends for a week, add in several bottles of cold and crisp white wine, and good food; it can get rather silly out.