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Monthly Archives

February 2011

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A little more remembering

Back in December we spent a memorable weekend with our friends Marian McKinney and Calum Learn at McKinney Forge and Design Studio in Bucyrus.  Marian and Calum helped us forge four handles for the big BARn doors. We completed the handles in a weekend, but Brian took them to work to drill holes in them, we had to polish them, buy big wood screws, etc., and we finally got our handles hung on the doors this past weekend, just a few days shy of the anniversary of our friend, Charlie's death.  We aren't master blacksmiths like Charlie was, but we…
The Beer

Little Nanobrewery on the Piney

There's Bronzeback Pale Ale in the cooler carbonating and conditioning.  There's Ozark Firefly Wheat fermenting.  And we're brewing again this weekend. We're tweaking and tasting the beer. We're feeding lots of spent grains to the girlfriends. We're continuing to work on the the BARn, making it ready for all the microbrew lovers that want to try a Piney River pint. And it dawned on me over the weekend as Brian and I were brewing, this is the first job I've ever had where I had a beer in hand while working.  If that doesn't make you want to work in…
The Beer

February 1, 2011

It was on February 11, 2009  over a bottle of Brewery Ommegang's "Three Philosophers" that we decided to make our own beer.  Almost two years later, on a day when we were tucked away at home awaiting "Snowpocalypse", the first official Piney River Brewing Company beer was brewed. For the record, the brewer (Brian) did most of the work while the assistant brewer (Joleen) did her day job, stopping only to take a few photos, much to the brewer's chagrin.  The assistant brewer did provide much assistance with the clean up last night. Up for the first brew was our…
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And just before you brew…

You need a place for the water to go. Since we need a septic for the brewery water waste and a place for the human waste to go from those visiting the brewery, we installed two septic tanks last week. Again, that involved digging and more digging--places for the two 500 gallon tanks and deep ditches for the leech lines coming out of the tanks.  I'd really like to know how many feet of dirt have been dug and moved around here in the past six months. We had to install two tanks/systems because the brewery yeasts and cleaners can…
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