We’re beginning to get on tap at places and are in process for getting approval for our 22oz bottles.

Currently on tap at 192 Brewing’s Lake Trail Taproom and this Friday at Brickyard Brewing‘s Grand Opening.

Call ahead and make sure it’s still on tap as they will go quick.

We do have growler fills on site at our brewery, follow the facebook page for hours of operation or drop us a line to make an appointment.

We will also be serving beer at the Snohomish Pumpking & Beer Festival October 26 and 27th

Rally stripes make everything faster. This is part of the laws of physics, maybe thermodynamics.

I rescued this vintage steel belted Coleman cooler and turned it into one awesome Jockey Box. It was brown and rusty, clear signs of being from the 70′s. Sanded down all the rust on the painted surfaces and then hit it with some Rust-O-Leum Primer, then a few base coats of Sail Blue followed by a clear coat. The clear coat was done to all the Chrome bits that also had some rust on them to stop the rust from growing and leave that “I’m old, who cares if there is some rust” look about it. Stole that idea from the Rat Rod community. However it would drive me bonkers to have a clear coated rusty hood on a car. Complete process pictures after the break Continue reading

Give yourself time. No really. Trial and errror are your best friends, along with friendly advice when it comes to getting everything where and how you want it.

But things get a bit more interesting when you are your own R&D department. This will require knowledge of many suppliers and what they all have to offer.

Normal big box home improvement stores will carry 90% of what you will need but that other 10% is made up of electronics suppliers, container manufacturers and industrial supply houses.

304 and 316 Stainless steel fittings can be had at Grainger, usually the next day if they don’t have it in stock. Then there is McMaster-Carr but they have so much stuff sometimes it is hard to easily locate what you need, but if you look hard enough they will have it and you will probably get it the next week. Remember copper only works while the beer is still wort, once the pH changes after fermentation you do not want it to touch copper.

Amazon comes in handy sometimes for thermocouplers, PIDs and various parts thanks to thousands of 3rd party sellers.

Local shops you will come to love are usually the small hardware shops, unlike Lowes and Home Depot they have knowledgable staff and sometimes an old codger that knows exactly of something that will work for your project.

Electrical is mostly sorted out. Just have to finish designing our racking transfer system and then bottling.

Our first batch of White and Nerdy is churning away in the fermenter and our first batch of Sour Mashed Berliner Weiss is in hour 4 of it’s 72 hour mashing process.

I have done some upgrading to some of our electrical systems, upgraded our thermocouplers from +/-2 degree accuracy to +/-0.2 accuracy with 1/10 degree resolution as well as getting our completely automated mash tun temperature control up and running. If you believe everything they tell you at Full Sail, we have more automation on our tiny little mash tun than they do. Not sure if I totally believe that though.

Artwork for our bottles are being worked on and being prepped for submitting to the feds for label approval.

We opened our commercial bank account with good ol BECU. Keeping it as local as possible.

We are also waiting for the money to show up in our account so we can order our Made in the USA bottle filling equipment from Vigneron, another small family owned business.

October is going to be a busy month, stay tuned. There has already been the question floated about our Fall Seasonal. It is a pumpkin beer, but we refuse to be one of those assholes that saturate the market with pumpkin beers before Summer is even over. We will never brew a Seasonal, before the actual Season, if you do, what is the point of calling it a Seasonal.

I’ve had these on my note pad since Seattle Beer Week so I decided I need to put them online and store them where I could find it again.

They are as follows.

New Belgium Blending Symposium – Seattle Beer Week – 5/16/2012 – Stumbling Monk, Seattle WA

Hosts are Eric & Laura Salazar from New Belgium Brewing

• 10 people per panel in every taste test, look for trends, 70 testers in total
• Trial & Error is key, there are no easy solutions
• 7000 Hectolitres of Wood & Barrels

All the sour beers start from two different worts, a light and a dark.

Oscar

• Dark Wort
• La Folie

Felix

• Light Wort
• Eric’s Ale
• Le Terroir
• Higher ABV
• Oat-Wheat

Both worts are brewed with a lager strain in stainless steel. Must reach terminal gravity before any acidification processes

Acidification takes place in wood. Add any juices after acidification, then add yeast and blend.

Things to keep in mind with wood

• Too much headspace is bad
• Organic Materials (Beer Stone, Calcium) is bad, scrape out the wood.
• Cleaning, use Soda Ash, Citric Acid, Sulfur Soak, never use steam.
• Used French Oak is best, especially from Red Wines

Hoppy and High Alcohol beers will kill your lactic bacteria. Feeding your barrels and keeping them happy is a good thing. You can train bad barrels by transferring out half of the bad beer and adding good beer to it, but have patience. Many will take up to two years in the barrel and Pedio takes up to 18 months to create lactic acid.

Taste every barrel when it comes time to blend. Write less notes, but figure out what you need and what that barrel is saying. Mark it as either, Use, Blend, or Wait.

Once bottled, DRINK IT! Don’t cellar the beer for too long, New Belgium pasteurizes their Lips of Faith beers, they are at their peak of flavor once they hit the shelves.

The following was my custom blend ratio from their casks.

• 10% – Young – Dark fruits, some bitterness
• 30% – Mid Fouder 14 – Malty, Cherry, Slight Sour
• 20% – Mid Fouder 17 – Less Sour, Cherry
• 30% – Oude – Sour on the back end, warming
• 10% – La Folie

So much has been going on since the last post. Our fans on Facebook have seen it all happen as the days went by.

Things that have been completed since the last post:

1. Fermentation Box build and painted
2. Walk In Cooler built and painted
3. Final approval from the Washington Liquor Control board.
4. We purchased a Vinyl Cutter/Plotter and are working on some new swag ideas
5. We got some prototype embroidered hats in, they are pretty cool.
6. Installed a new plumbing system for our Heat Exchanger
7. Installed a new 3 basin stainless steel sink

Tomorrow I am going to be doing some more clean up and arranging before making a supply run. We need yeast and then we can start brewing.

Just wanted to pop in a quick update. We’re done with the fermenter box and ready to roll. I think I might call it the ferment-o-tron 5000.

We got our provisional letter of acceptance from WALCB, but the final two conditions haven’t been met yet because our inspector has been in training all week and I haven’t been able to get an answer via email since Monday.

I have to get a phone briefing on the liquor laws and then complete a physical inspection before the permit can be approved.

They know we want to open by Sept 1st, and they are helping in cutting it pretty darn close.

The terrible thing about all this is we can’t brew until they give the approval so everything is sitting empty waiting for the first 330 gallons of beer to flow through the fermenters. It’s driving me up the walls to be sitting here wasting so much time not being able to start the business that I’ve worked two years on building.

Once this is complete it will house 22 20gal fermenters which will arrive wednesday. Then we are all ready for the Liquor Control agent to do their inspection.

We are in contact with the Washington LCB and have been assigned an investigator. Our Public Notice is on it’s way and we can get it posted and then hope for the best.

We did get some stickers made up and will have information available soon on how you can get some.

If you want more constant updated follow us over at our Facebook page

Our application has been approved by the TTB. Washington State license has been filed and City of Everett paperwork is filled out and ready to be dropped off at City Hall.

I have ordered some stickers that we will have in a week or so. Looking forward to that, there is still a handful of shirts from our first order still available as well.

I can’t wait to start brewing beer for everyone. Stay tuned for whats coming up in the future and where you’ll be able to try out Justice Brewing beer for the very first time.