One month in

What a ride!  Excitement, anxiety, exhilaration, stress, joy, insanity, (insert emotion here), etc, etc, etc…  When we opened on March 23^rd, we really had no idea what to expect.  Fortunately, the brewery has been received by our community better than we ever could have imagined.  So many people came out for the opening and following days, we were nearly cleaned out of beer within the first week.  Although stressful, I guess these are the problems businesses want to have.  Within three or four days of being open, we were already looking for additional fermentors to increase our capacity.  If you know anything about the craft brewing equipment market right now, getting used equipment is nearly impossible, and new equipment is typically at about a 16-20 lead time.  With some great luck, we found a couple new 7 BBL fermentors out in Portland that were available and ready for immediate shipment.  The addition of those two fermentors will add 150% more capacity than we had, and we’re glad to have it.  In the following couple weeks after opening, we brought the Belgian Monkey and Inspiration Pale Ale on tap and they quickly went fast.   We were glad to receive the two new tanks on April 13^th at 11:00 am, and with the help of Mel Vahi and his team we were able to take apart the front window unit, open up the trap door into the basement, setup a rig to drop the tanks downstairs, get the tanks off the truck and through the trap door, and put it all back together by 4:00 pm so we could open that day at 5:00 pm.  The next week of brewing was pretty nuts as we cranked out a double batch of Soft Tail, double batch of Pale Ale, double batch of Hard Tail, and a single batch of Black Squirrel Bourbon Stout to fill up all the tanks.  We’re happy to get the Soft Tail back on tap and excited to get the Hard Tail back this upcoming Wednesday.  On Tuesday we’re brewing the Saison again and will harvest the yeast for the Belgian Monkey the following Tuesday.  Within a couple weeks we should have five of our beers back on tap again.  To get through these times of beer shortage, we’ve brought a couple guest beers on tap – Bell’s Amber and Oberon, and Half-Acre’s Over Ale.  Great beers, but we’ll be happy to get more of our own beers on tap real soon.

In other news, we’ve been approved to provide outdoor seating.  Not that we need it right now with snow in the middle of April in Chicago, but nice to know we’ll have our own little beer garden once the weather starts to warm up.  The furniture should arrive in a week or two and it will be a great feeling to sit back in front of the Village Green and watch the sunset over the train station with good beer in hand.

We’ve also just submitted an application to the Lake Bluff Zoning Board of Appeals to extend our hours.  Now that we have a bit more capacity and have some of the kinks worked out, we’d like to open up a bit earlier for the lunch crowd, as well as stay open a bit later (11:00 pm) during the weekdays.  We’ll see what the ZBA has to say, but until now we’ve been a pretty low-key business in terms of disruption and we look forward to being a good addition to the neighborhood.  The ZBA meeting isn’t until the third week of May and then we need to get final approval from the Village Board in June so stay tuned as we probably won’t be able to change our hours until mid June.

Well, we can’t say enough how much we appreciate all of your support of our little brewery.  So far, so good, and we’ll keep making the beer as fast as we can.  We’re looking forward to getting some new beers from the menu on tap as well, but need to get caught up first.  And we’ll try to be better about getting more info on the blog and website, but for now priorities are clear – brew, brew, brew…

Cheers,

Dave and Rodd