It’s swelteringly hot outside. I am standing beside the pilot system in the warehouse making a pilot batch of American IPA. The heady smell of malt and the screaming aroma of 6 American hop varietals are soothing to me…even with all this heat. A semi comes lumbering in to the parking lot. It’s for us. It is our walk in cooler. Joe goes to get the forklift while I inspect the seal on the trailer. We break the seal and open the trailer up. And then it hits me, we are going to have to hand carry the majority of this trailer load. We were able to get the doors to the cooler in to the building via forklift and some of the panels but the majority of them (around 50+) were 16 feet wide and would not fit through the warehouse garage door on a forklift. Remember I said it was hot outside, well the truck trailer was even warmer. Especially when I had to climb stacks of cooler panels to throw or move off the panels on top to get to the panels on the bottom. If anyone ever tells you that heat doesn’t rise then come and talk to me. In the midst of unloading and moving these panels around I am also trying to make hop additions to the kettle and making sure that I cut the boil at the right time. After several breaks for water and to cool down we were finally able to get it all into the warehouse. Almost a week later and I still have slight signs of bruising from moving the panels and Joe’s back is giving him problems(and we are both still trying to remove all the Styrofoam from our bodies). I can honestly say that is the hardest day of work that I have put in since I have been down here and this is just the beginning. Wait until install, those will be some full days. And then there’s double brew days that might end up lasting 16 hours plus. I don’t want to think about those things now…I work day to day. I find it is the only sane way to exist.

That’s enough griping for now. Where is my orchestra of tiny violins? The props are all fermenting nicely. The Robust Porter ended up being around 16-16.5 degrees plato. The IPA was at 17.5-18 degrees plato. The Barley wine weighed in at 34 degrees plato and the parti-gyled Belgian specialty that came out of second runnings off the Barley Wine mash was at 12.6 degrees plato. I also helped Matt from J.J. Taylor brew his Red Fox Red Rye Ale. Friday was spent filing away resources for future reference.

We are pulling or have pulled our plumbing permit by now. I am still awaiting the construction permit. Still set for July though when I don’t know.

I have heard nothing about our tanks nor seen any CADs from Premier Stainless. I was wondering if there is a more precise date regarding the arrival of our tanks but have heard nothing in what seems like two weeks. I guess I will continue to try and contact them.

The marketing team we met seem promising. I still have to get additional information to them in order for us to move ahead but right now we haven’t even decided which direction to go regarding some of the questions that they are asking. We are going to have to make some decisions soon on this however because label approval takes time. The ideas that we have presented are Cuban based artists. It also reflects the city of Tampa and its rich, multicultural sociological base. I also felt that some of the art work for the 2001 movie Waking Life would fit our concept as well and we haven’t completely thrown that idea out the window. Of course we wouldn’t be using art work from the film itself, only using it as a rough reference. We are going to have additional ideas that won’t fit this concept so we are not completely married to it. We like to swing too.

We have been working on a new concept/pilot. It is currently being produced by only two breweries and one is in Canada with the other being in the U. S. and having just started their project. We will be piloting a Mayan Chocolate Imperial Stout. It will have ancho chiles mostly with small amounts of pasilla chiles, vanilla, cacao nibs and threshold hints of cinnamon. We have come up with a name for it and the label(commercial product label) will also discuss the history of Mayan chocolate production and the Olmec culture as well. This should be an interesting beer to say the least.

The Pre-Prohibition Pils(Patio Pils) is going to be kegged this Friday. This is the last beer out of the first batch of pilots that we made that is still not on draft and hasn’t even been tasted yet. I am really looking forward to tasting this beer on Monday. I love lagers and have made this recipe commercially before. It is one of the maltiest pilsners(traditional…not imperial pilsners or anything like that) that you will lay lip to. It also has the corn flake like flavor component and just enough hops to create a balance in the finish.

We are starting to run out of cooler space. After this weekend we will have 5 kegs of beer and 4 brands on draft with four more beers in the pipeline. Might have to go and visit Brian from SBS this week.

I guess that does it for this week and last week. Look for another post early next week or late this week depending on what kind of progress we make.  

As the Russians say, “Budem,” and I will leave it at that since I will most likely never know if the Mayan culture ever had a word for toasting or much less even incorporated it into their culture,

Wayne Wambles

Head Brewer

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