19 Days In – Loving It!

As I write this we’re half way through Day 19 and the place is already starting to feel like something special.

Once the bar frame went up and the cool room fame went in, my liver excitedly skipped a beat. There’s still a mountain to do, but we’re going well and mostly stuffs going according to plan with a potential opening date now moved forward to January.

We’ve rented some tank space at Dad & Dave’s brewery across the road and right now there’s 2,400litres of lager, or the equivalent of 6,400 tinnies, fermenting away. It’ll be ready to drink in a few weeks!

Having Tony and Scotty on the team has also changed things massively, all of a sudden we can make shit happen at three times the speed. And these guys are giving their all. As an example, Tony slept in the back of his ute last night to make sure he was on site for the 7:30am keg delivery, and Scotty spent hours digging out a tree root under the front slab because… well, someone had to do it.

Getting the job done!

Sure, shit is still difficult and we’re regularly hitting road blocks. Stuff like:

• The owner threatening to increase kick us our or increase our rent because he claimed our lease wasn’t binding because we didn’t get approval for a part of the fit-out. I had to get legal advice and lost a few nights sleep over this one… (it’s now sorted)
• Our huge timber windows for the front of the building (that take 4 weeks to make) turning up painted. The factory is now taking them back and sanding back the paint… thankfully not our fuckup!
• Shipping costs blowing out from $12k to $31k, with still no guarantees the tanks will arrive on time.
• Canning manufacturers backing up. What was a 4 week lead time on orders is now 8, so we can’t get cans when we need them… Growlers ahoy!

But…

On the scale of good vibes vs bad vibes, we’re totally vibing right now, spurred on by the knowledge this brewery is actually happening, and it’s going to be sick!

I’m posting each day’s progress on Instagram if you’d like to follow along https://www.instagram.com/buckettys/

Read our next blog here.

ARE WE HALFWAY? I DON’T EVEN KNOW…