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 We are discarding old and outdated parts of the brewery and replace them with the best, cutting edge, adding new technology.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!)

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.

In the afternoon we drove from Blue Hill down to Rockport for the the First Annual Mid-Coast Food and Wine Festival which was coordinated by my friend Bettina of Cellardoor Winery and Cathe of the State of Maine Cheese Company. It was like a reunion in that I saw so many friends who I only get to see on rare occasions, now that I moved up north 55 miles to the border between Mid-Coast and Down-East Maine. There were several wineries represented; my friend Keith’s Sweetgrass Farm Winery & Distillery, my friends Buddy and Holly of Savage Oakes Winery, and of course we at Winterport Winery had a table at the tasting. Mike and Joan’s daughter and her husband were there representing our winery, as I played hooky for the day. Another friend, Brian, who just started up Oyster River Winegrowers was supposed to be there, but couldn’t make it for some reason. That’s too bad because I haven’t yet tried his white wine that came out this summer.

At the food stalls I ran into several more friends. Ann Marie of Ann Marie’s Kitchen was there serving great pork cooked medium rare and juicy after being marinated in her Secret Sauce. Ann Marie is a firecracker and I like her and her fiance a lot. They don’t live to far from me and I have to get together with them soon to kick back and hang out, although hanging out with Ann Marie is usually anything but quiet, more like being in the presence of a human dynamo that’s putting out 10,000 volts.

Then we bottled up the last of the strawberry wine, which should last us to next strawberry season. We started up some pear wine and apple wine and will be making quite a bit of both of these, especially the apple wine. Some of that will be ear-marked for when we get the distillery up and running, so we can make a Calvados style aged apple brandy.

Well, the brewery/distillery had another slowdown. By this time I am amazed I have any hair left, let alone a full head. I have been pulling at it non-stop for months now. Well, it seems to be straighter than before, and lighter in color as well. Interestingly, my mustache and sideburns have started to go white in patches. I guess my hair is as stressed as I am. The latest is that the boiler quotes were way too high again from the last dealer we spoke to, and so we are getting in more quotes. These guys can’t seem to understand that we don’t want or need some multi-million btu steam boiler, but something on the smaller side.

photo gallery at end of post