Author: WishboneAde

Used for cooling the boiling wort on its way to the fermenting vessel.

A Stones throw away from our premises is ‘Brewery Street’ just off Dalton Lane. A member of the Keighley Local History Group posted this in reply to my asking:

The Cattle family were brewers in Pocklington and commenced a complimentary business in Keighley in the Old Brewery at Cook Lane during 1869. They subsequently built the premises & Atley House in Dalton Lane opening in Spring 1873. The adjoining street being named Brewery Street. The family opened a third brewery at Seacombe some time later. Brewing ceasing at Keighley during 1903. Their best known pub in Keighley was the Hope & Anchior Halifax Road sold to the existing tenant when the brewery closed.

Wouldn’t it be good to find some old recipes!

The units are currently undergoing a re-roof by the landlord so, as you’d expect with this weather, things are getting wetter the puddles are getting bigger and I’m a little scared that rain might stop play unless the roofers get cracked on and the walls start to dry out!

This weekend has been Emma giving the office a second coat of paint, then she set too on the flaking paint outside the office… its going to be a heck of a lot of scraping and brushing!
We had a family member helping too, Julian did a fine job of removing bits of old metal brackets and conduit from the steel-work on the ceiling it was surprising how much difference it made seeing the area with less dangling clutter.

We also removed a heating duct in preparation for where the vessels will go and I finally finished my water piping around to the brewing area, only a small leak to fix around the water meter I installed and that was just because I didn’t have my biggest spanner with me.

We have the hygienic wall cladding on site now too, with MDF/timber backing hopefully arriving next week, I’ll also hope to get all the blockwork, sand and cement to site soon too so we can start building our cold-store and a small plinth where I’ll stand a tank for extra water storage.

The weekend finished with our miss-directed post being delivered by our neighbour, we got someone touting for business, and invoice and… Our HMRC Registration of our Brewery!! Yeahhh!!!

It was dated the 15th Dec ’14 so had actually taken a matter of just a few weeks to be processed.

Last weekend we spent a good amount of time sorting out our 1st floor toilet block which had 9, yes 9 burst pipes. Emma spent the day giving our brewery office a really good clean so this its ready for a good lick of paint now. Meetings with builder, flooring contractor and electrician this week and all being well I should get some serious plumbing done this weekend to get water to where I’m going to want it for cask washer, cooling, sink, kettle (for making a cuppa) etc

Lease signed, fingers crossed get keys this week!

So hope to have builders on site soon and all the brewkit ordered this week!

Check us out, and thanks for the Keighley News taking an interest in our plans.

I finally got back to the unit with working lights and took some photos of the ground floor, the more i think about it the more I feel it may be more productive, less stress about ceiling heights, and future proof to keep the downstairs for brewing and racking with the 10bbl conical vessels on the floor above with transfer pipework leading down to the ground floor for racking, carbonating, kegging, leaving more room for actually working, possibly simpler and cheaper drainage.  Smaller 5bbl vessels can still stay downstairs and a small brick bund would have to be constructed for drainage around the upstairs vessels.

keep an eye on updates @WishboneBrewery

Well things seem to be getting closer, though I doubt I will be brewing before Christmas, I’m hopeful that I can sign the lease and start ordering the brew kit within the next week or so…. then comes the task of preparing the building to be a brewery, drains and floor need to be done and clad / paint walls and ceilings, sort the electrics for lights and sockets, get my own mains water meter, register with HMRC, I registered Wishbone Brewery Limited the other week too.

Here are a few videos of the inside of the building…

I’ve been looking at another unit just a couple of doors down from the 5000 sq/foot one I mentioned previously, at firs glance the ceiling height was all wrong and looked rather dim and pokey even though it was only 500 sq/foot smaller. I got to look at the first floor unit too which is a massive 9000 sq/foot but having an entire brewery on the first floor sounded like a total manual-handling nightmare. i left feeling a bit disheartened as the 5000 sq/foot unit I had looked at was to be taken by someone else who didn’t need to instate drainage.

I slept on it and started to wonder if I could work with some of the ground floor height restrictions, did a lot of emailing back and forth with the fabricators to see if we could build vessels to fit, so finally happy that it would be possible to install vessels in this ground floor unit.

A few things clicked into place, the offer of a forklift from the landlord and the use of the first floor unit as a malt loft and dry goods storage.

I am now waiting for a camera drain survey to be done so that we can confirm that a drain connection can be made and we can turn these units into a brewery.

The future potential of me taking on both ground and first floor units is I would have sole access to both from the street outside and thoughts of a brewery tap on the first floor, I’d create a bar made of OSB cladding and polished cast concrete bar top keeping things looking industrial like the old Sir James Hill buildings have been.

Interesting thoughts…