Brewery Update #2

For those of you who read this blog with any regularity you might be wondering – “Hey I thought this was suppose to be about brewing in Asia, - where’s the brewing ?” Each week I think that I will have some juicy news to put on the blog about the brewery’s progress and each week I am deigned. If you have been following along you’ll remember that about 110 days ago we had 100 days until we HAD to be brewing. Well, yes - There have been a few delays, and several set backs. But that’s kind of how projects of this nature go. There are so many companies and people involved that if one person has a problem it usually impacts someone else and your delay is not just that one person (or company). That’s the case here – except everyone has had delays. The only two things that showed up on time were the malt and the hops. We still don’t have water in the building – and as you may know beer (like people) is about 90% water.

So what the hell has been going on you ask. Well, a lot. When I was hired (back in May of 05) I was responsible to setting up the brewery, making the beers and then representing those beers out in the market. When I arrived in September the responsibility of the project manager for the new brewery building was added. I did not (then) know much about buildings, but there were a lot of people to help and support that project, and so we managed to build a pretty nice structure. Then we decided to add a brewery outlet downtown. Then we decided to have a mini brewery in the outlet. I located a 3.5 hl brew house and we had some 7 hl tanks made for us in Malaysia. Then we decided we needed to set that mini brewery up in the new brewery building and brew on it BEFORE the arrival of the 30 hl Microbrewery (because the 30 hl brew house was running about 60 day behind schedule). And we had to do all this before the Hungry Ghost Festival which runs the entire 7th lunar month. It is considered very bad luck to start up any new enterprise during the 7th lunar month (which starts July 21st)

So - We are finishing up the new building, setting up the outlet downtown, setting up the 30 hl brewery (the tanks arrived this past week - check the web site below), setting up a 3.5 hl brewery in the same area, planning to brew on the 3.5 hl system this week, and then after brewing about 15 times we will uninstalling it from the new building and reinstalling it in the outlet downtown. By that time the 30 hl brew house will have arrived and we will finish the installation of the 30 hl system and be ready for full production. Yes, it is all a bit confusing, but there you have it – that’s what I have been doing. We will be brewing our first batch tomorrow and (should all go right) in a few days I will be posting the results. Cheers!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55592119@N00/