Soft openings The Beer

Soft openings

When we started this process, we thought we would save our old barn, make a little beer in it, and see what the interest was in beer hand crafted on the Piney.  We had barely cleaned the old hay and manure out of the barn before word started getting out about Piney River Brewing Company, and we kept hearing, "This is what this area needed!" After we got our licenses last year, we poured all of our energy into getting the BARn in shape to brew.  The brewing began in January, and the major construction work stopped.  Yet in between…
What the heck IS a growler? The Beer

What the heck IS a growler?

Well, here's a Piney River Brewing Company growler. These are half-gallon glass containers that hold beer. According to the Alstrom Brothers at Beer Advocate:  In the late 1800s and early 1900s, fresh beer was carried from the local pub to one's home by means of a small-galvanized pail. Rumor has it that when the beer sloshed around the pail, it created a rumbling sound as the CO2 escaped through the lid, thus the term "growler" was coined. Before World War II, city kids used to bring covered buckets of draft beer from a local bar or brewery to workers at…
10 to 2 Today The Beer

10 to 2 Today

10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today.  We're open.  Yep, you heard it right, we've cracked the door to the BARn just a bit.  We have Bronzeback Pale Ale and Ozark Firefly Wheat on tap.  We've got growlers to fill, so you don't have to be thirsty. Back when we started this Piney River Brewing Company thing we thought that we would use our little Sabco system to test the waters.  We were going to brew some beer, create a really cool tap room with a spectacular view, and maybe, just maybe, drum up a few Piney River Brewing Company fans…
A little more remembering Start up

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…
Little Nanobrewery on the Piney 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…
February 1, 2011 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…
And just before you brew… Start up

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…
#1 Ingredient in Beer Start up

#1 Ingredient in Beer

If you follow Piney River Brewing Company on Facebook, you may have had part in the PRBC quiz fun we had, asking our Facebook fans what the #1 ingredient is in beer.  Some of our fans figured it out, some didn't.  Either way, the #1 ingredient in beer is alive and well in the BARn tonight. Brian and I spent the weekend hooking up pex lines to the water hook up in the BARn. While we enjoyed the new album from The Decemberists, Andy did the honors and tapped the new water lines. We think we may have a future…
Ta da! Start up

Ta da!

We finished the interior portion of the wall on the wet side of the brewery tonight. The cleaning of the brewery has begun.  And that's a good thing because this is sitting inside the brewery, too. Malt, grain, dextrose and other very important items for brewing beer.  Yes, we will begin actually brewing some beer soon.  There's still lots of work to be done on the BARn, but we'll have beer in there too...which is why we began this whole endeavor....
Progress as promised Start up

Progress as promised

Saturday proved to be a typically non-typical Ozark Saturday in January weather-wise.  We worked up a sweat cleaning up the piles of boards on the West end of the BARn.  There are no photos documenting the day's work, but again, I will say that the hardest days of brewing will never be as laborious as the work we did on Saturday. Brian picked through 8, 10, 12 foot old oak boards that once covered the outside of the barn.  He pulled nails, and then we moved the good old boards into the BARn, to dry out upstairs where they will…
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