This week brought some advancements towards our opening. As you saw below, four of our six fermenters arrived. The gas line is being ran today to our gas meter which we will use to supply our boiler that then delivers steam to our brewhouse. When we get our secondary kettle in (this will be after we have money coming in) we will also use this gas supply line to direct fire it via our burner instead of our boiler.

Joey here: For those of you fascinated by the art of small-scale earth manipulation and removal techniques, sometimes called digging, here are some pics of the gas line install:
  

The boiler should be arriving this Monday coming up.

We met with our engineer today and he informed us that our sanitary permits would be in hand by next week. This is just for the exterior of the building. He said that we most likely won’t see the interior construction permits until the beginning of August.

The concrete contractor and plumbing contractor should be able to knock out the floor modifications that we need done in a week or less. That gives us the exact amount of lead time that we will need for the floor covering following construction. Seems like it is coming together just slower than we anticipated. Since there are no shortcuts, this is the reality. It is still better than I originally thought but let’s face it, when I start to see tanks and equipment coming into the building it makes me want to quickly put everything together and start to brew. Why can’t it be as easy as when I bought my first computer? I took it out of the box and plugged everything in where the dummy diagram told me to and voila, I am surfing the web.

Our hats came in the mail today. They look great. I believe we will be retailing them soon online but I am unsure of the cost at this point. I think Joe might be posting some pictures of these with this blog but I won’t know until it is up. If you missed some of the prior blogs then you can reference back and see the proof under 7-08-08.

Joey again. I am indeed posting pics of the hats. One of my 8 month old twins (Lucia) acts as a model:

Last but not least, during our meeting with Jim yesterday, we broke out the wine thief and extracted some of the Capricho Oscuro from the cask. It is flat of course but I can’t begin to tell you how the wood screams already (macaroons and vanilla). Virgin oak requires little or less contact time than a previously used cask. Some of the bright malt components have been overtaken by the wood and now have a more vintage quality. I am sure that oxidation has a role in this slight loss of malt flavor as well but the overall strength of the beers should be able to hold their own against the oxidative properties and reveal one of the most interesting concoctions you have tasted in a while. If you don’t know how oak tastes in a beer or have trouble smelling it in a beer then this will be the beer for you. If you can’t pick up the wood when we release this beer then unfortunately I must say you would be a hopeless case.

That is all for this week. Hope that you have oak cask aromas in your dreams tonight.

Take Care,

Wayne Wambles

Head Brewer

Cigar City Brewing

wayne@cigarcitybrewing.com