Alexandria, We Are Here
It has been awhile since I have updated our blog, frankly, I haven’t had much time. This project of ours has been in a full throttle for the past 6 to 8 months. We are at the point now where it is almost impossible to stop. Two days ago, we announced to our Kickstarter backers our location. It is not what we had originally planned. I have learned in life that you have to adjust, most of the time on the fly, in order to move forward. We all tend to get stuck on a certain idea, paint a picture in our mind, of how things are and how things should be. When that picture gets rearranged, it can be very difficult to move on. One thing I always try to do to help me look at this new image is look at my end goal. In this case, my end goal was to get our brewery open. Did this rearrangement prevent that from happening? No.
To explain things to you in a nutshell, we were looking at a large piece of property on Alexandria Pike (US 27) for over a year. We have been out to see it quite a few times; sometimes with our investors and sometimes with our contractor. We drew up floor plans. We had a brewing system designed to fit specifically into the basement of the old farm house that still stands on this piece of property. On out final trip out there with two of our investors, we noticed ornamental grass had been cut down revealing a septic tank. Our realtor noted that this was not mentioned in the disclosures and called the listing agent. The listing agent said it was being sold as a property for development, despite pictures of the house’s interior being shown on the commercial listing websites. So, we got quotes on tapping into sewer and quotes on a commercial grade septic system. At the end of the day, that property would not work. Our entire remodeling budget would have been spent on one of these two options.
We adjusted. We are leasing a large space at 7926 Alexandria Pike. You can get an idea of where that is by clicking on our location tab. If you live in Alexandria or are familiar with the area, we are in the Jolly Towne Centre where Skip N Flip used to be. It is less than a half of a mile further south than where we planned to go. Our space is much, much bigger than we planned to start with, but this allows us plenty of room to grow and it gives us room to put a restaurant in (we are looking for someone to sublet that that space now). We will still start with a 5BBL brewhouse, six 5BBL tanks, and a 5BBL bright. These are on order now from DME (Diversified Metal Engineering) and will arrive this winter. We also hope to find a used 10 or 15BBL tank for our longer fermenting beers or lagers.
The question you are probably asking (and have been asking since you started reading) is, “When are they opening?” We are shooting for early March. If everything goes smooth, we should hit that without much of a problem. The problem is, with a new business, breweries in particular, things rarely go smooth during a build out. We had hoped to be open this past summer, but we had to rewrite everything. So, we ask you bear with us. If you are not, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to see our progress. We are excited to be moving forward full steam and can’t wait to see you in our taproom!
