Wishbone Brewery – Keighley, Yorkshire, UK

Our floor is done and the vessels should be put in position on Tuesday.

Well thats that sorted and a step closer, our fermenting vessels should dock in Liverpool 3rd July so fingers crossed in Keighley about a week later. Installation should all be complete within a day, plumbing up, commissioning, cleaning, calibration… then hopefully brewing for August!

We can now sell on and off sales along with playing live and recorded music 🙂

Our builders have been on site for a couple of days and have one day remaining to complete the sloping floors.

And we have covered the damp, hard to paint, wall which will be the Brewery Bar area with funky industrial looking corrugated steel.

Our delivery from China is making its way towards Suez and it’s shipping canal leading to the Mediterranean.

On the 19th May ’15 our 5 cylindro-conical fermenting vessels sailed, they are quoting 30 days to reach Liverpool docks… PANIC!!!

The Chinese fabricator ‘Zhongde’ where we are getting our fermenting vessels built are finally ready to ship, so all being well the final payment will clear in the next day or two and they will ship on the 19th May…
Plenty of work still to do, though this week its trapped nerve stops play hopefully I’ll get back to fitness soon, I’ll have to plan how I’m going to get the fermenting vessels out of the shipping container when it arrives…

Basically I have two options, borrow the neighbour’s forklift and hire some fork extensions and hope the truck has the capacity to lift, or hire a big-ass forklift with fork extensions that will be more than capable… I’m thinking the latter, though a bit more expensive is the sensible choice.

Builder on site! The drains went in the other week and this coming week the concrete screed falls (sloping floor) will be created, then when the concrete has cured and dried the Ultrasyntec floor guys can come and lay the polyurethane screed and make us look all posh 🙂

We are still decorating walls and ceilings, still building block-work cold store walls and have a number of holes to patch up around the building along with completing the concrete plinth.

Soon we can start work on the chiller system once we get the chiller unit into its permanent location. The malt loft needs some TLC, the aforementioned holes to patch up in walls, cleaning, cladding, painting to do.

The Chinese still haven’t shipped, really need them to get a move on as once the posh floor goes down we need to get brewing asap!

The decorating and building of walls is still ongoing as are the electrics, we are hopefully getting the builders on site in the next week or two to start on the drains and sloping floors. The vessels from China have not yet shipped, when they ship I’d guess at 6-8 weeks on the sea followed by however long it takes to clear through customs at Liverpool Docks.

Still to do are things like ordering all the pipework and associated valves for plumbing up the glycol chiller system for cooling fermenting vessels and cold store before getting some guys on site to fill & commission the installation, not to mention a load of pipe insulation and brackets that needs fitting.

On Thursday we took delivery of our Copper, Mash Tun, Hot Liquor Tank, Underback, Malt Hopper / Hydrator and Cask washer. This is the kit that has been built over at PureWeld, built in Yorkshire. You can check out photos of how our microbrewery is coming along at Flickr.

The main brew kit is almost ready for delivery, below are photos of the Copper, Mash Tun, Cask Washer and a little of the Hot Liquor Tank & Underback. Exciting stuff!

Today I started cladding the walls with moisture resistant MDF which will then be clad in hygienic UPVC plastic. We now have banners for brewery & Bradford Beer Festival too.

Lots of cleaning and painting to do and Brick laying on Sunday.