Location, tanks, and silly things like a name.

As to date, we are three weeks into looking for a building in Murrieta to lease. Lots of things come into play, like: Is there gas? Is there sufficient parking? Is it zoned properly? Does the landlord want a brewery/tasting room? Does it have a roll-up door so we can get our tanks into the building? Lastly, is the price and overall location a good fit?

By far, the hardest part has been finding a building with natural gas. I talked with the gas company and it can cost upwards of $30,000 to run gas 40' from the street--that 30K would buy a handful of really shiny fermenters!

Anyways, after scouring the city, we have narrowed it down to a few buildings on Jefferson Avenue (all without gas of course). Jefferson avenue seems like it would provide easy access, it's a good landmark road, it's close to Bulldog Brewery (and another not-yet-to-be-announced-other-new-brewery-in-Murrieta). Plus, it's just a 5 minute tour bus ride from any of the Temecula Breweries which is a huge perk. Here's a sneak peak at one of the units we are considering:

For now, everything is in the agents hand. Offers are out, calls have been made, and now, we wait....

But, there is good news!! We have purchased the brewing system (Pictures Below). It is going to be a bit of frankenbrew set up, but once we get it to the welders it will be solid. The Hot Liquor Tank and Mash Tun are both 15 barrels open top tanks that came out of a Rockbottom Brewery in Nashville. They are insulated and jacketed, and will hold heat very nice. The Boil Kettle is a 7 barrel domed top dairy tank coming over from Bad Axe, Michigan (BTW, Bad Axe would be a cool name for the brewery). Its a 300 gallon single wall tank on stainless steel legs.

You may be wondering why we have two 15 barrel tanks and one 7 barrel tank? Well, we got a good deal on the large tanks (made by Specific Mechanical).  By having these larger tanks we will be able to double our future capacity by only replacing one tank, our boil kettle. But for now we can brew 7 barrels (1 barrel equals 31 gallons) at a time which will insure that we are only selling the freshest of beer.

The system is being shipped directly to the welders--Steel Nuts Fabrication in Murrieta--to be fitted with some manways, stainless steel legs on the HLT and Mash Tun, a whirlpool port, a wedge wire false bottom, and since these tanks will be 6 feet tall, a platform.  Steel Nuts built my homebrew system and does the best work I have ever seen. They have a welder who is certified to work on stainless steel, and these guys always go above and beyond where quality is concerned.

That brings us to the name. Every brewery will tell you, this is by-and-large the most difficult part of the process. Well, some people just name there brewery anything crazy, but we want something that fits who we are, and who our target audience is. Problem is, there are thousands of breweries in the world and only so many names. All of my favorite names seem to be taken. People say I have a very large head, so, I though Fat Heads would be a great name! Apparently so did someone else, and they did a wonderful job with the branding. So I consulted a thesaurus, and tried Big Head; also taken. I mixed it up with Nodding Head; taken... and so it went. I tried other names (Shipwreck, Sledgehammer, Red Horse) and they were names of beers themselves.

So you see, each brewery out there owns a bag full of names, and this is why we have brewery names like Monkey-footed Mouse or Ninja Horse. Both of which I actually kinda like, hmm.....


Anyways, off to look at some more buildings, cheers!!

Justen Foust