East Durham Brewery Project

Twostage said:

I'd go kegs too :-

Probably easier to get a landlord to try a keg than bottles.
Less 'units' to deal with (outbound and inbound).
No worries about selling bottle bombs or fire extinguishers.

I'd talk to a few landlords first and warm them up to the potential of taking a few barrels from a local start up.

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That's a long way off yet - maybe as much as a year. But thanks.

The_East_Durham_Project said:

That's a long way off yet - maybe as much as a year. But thanks.

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Yes, I was going to end with "When you get to that stage" but pressed submit too quick :smile:

Have you thought about a Kickstarter campaign?

Maybe a free pint for the low contributers, T-Shirts ect. It will bring in much needed funds and I'm sure you'll underestimate your costs initially.

How about approaching the owners of the land to the rear of your garage wall? If you explained what was happening and that all you wanted to do was fix the leak they might be amenable?

As for bottling I have been speaking with a craft brewer close to me - he does 800l batches, bottles the lot. He says it's the worst job of the whole process, but pubs won't buy barrels until they know it's all going to sell. Catch 22....

I have. And looking for any grants or funding that might be out there.
My financial guy will take care of all that, hopefully!

You're putting trust in someone 'hopefully'? For a business?! I would want a solid business contract with statements of expectation and at least a two-year forecast rather than an expectation with no market research. Don't mean to sound negative, but make sure your business plan is sound before you go much further. If you get it right there is money to be made. Get it wrong, you'll be throwing beer (and money) away.

Going to guess you haven't seen all of the thread.
Firstly, I've slowed the plans significantly. Business talk is at least 6 months away.

And the financial guy will be a 50% equity partner and is the financial controller for a very large leisure company, not some bloke with no incentive or knowledge. I was just getting casual with my language.


Taking things one step at a time.For now, I need to fix these damned leaks!

No I've seen all of the thread. I accept your use of casual language! Good luck with the leaks. Is it literally flooding in? Sometimes that's easier because at least you can see where it's coming from...

ManseMasher said:

No I've seen all of the thread. I accept your use of casual language! Good luck with the leaks. Is it literally flooding in? Sometimes that's easier because at least you can see where it's coming from...

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Its actually fissing where the air is being replaced by water. Managed to have a sneaky look today when I was finishing some painting.
For one thing, there's a bloody great thick concrete patch that runs down 50% of the side wall, waaaaay above the dpc and their garden is about 2 courses over it at the rear.
There's no way they're going to let some bloke who doesn't even live there dig up their garden :)

The pointing is poor and at the side (where the path is), the brickwork has been pushed (ballooned) out by about 1/4 of a brick for 4 courses across nearly a meter. Its a sorry state - but I'll not be the one to fix it.
Tanking slurry seems to be the short term fix I need.

Latest Photo

IMG_20150510_124610 by Peter Richardson, on Flickr

So it's your mate's garage - would he be able to help out? Where it's painted and lines are showing on the right of the picture - is that where it's ballooned out?

IMHO big decision here - down the line you will be selling human consumption beverage. Environmental health type people might not be impressed unless it's sorted. Two choices as I see it - sort it by whatever and whoever means, or cut your losses and find another one?

ManseMasher said:

So it's your mate's garage - would he be able to help out? Where it's painted and lines are showing on the right of the picture - is that where it's ballooned out?

IMHO big decision here - down the line you will be selling human consumption beverage. Environmental health type people might not be impressed unless it's sorted. Two choices as I see it - sort it by whatever and whoever means, or cut your losses and find another one?

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My mate won't help, nor would I ask him to. He's had the garage for 10 years and never set foot in it due to the broken door. I won't ask him to put himself out any further. I also don't want to attract any attention to what I'm doing - which I've also mentioned on these boards.
The whole side of the garden would need to be dug up - there's just no way someone is going to all that to happen for a stranger. Its a total non-starter!

The ballooning is in the far right corner of the picture, you can just about see it. At that point, the brickwork is against the concrete path, which is clearly putting pressure on the brick work.
The line you spoke of is just where I've been brushing the water out to find the source.


I did post this before, possibly in another thread - This Garage will NOT be a commercial building. Nothing I make here will be ever sold.
This is purely my pilot brew room for learning and possibly product development. Everything I make will be given away to friends and family, hopefully in return for feedback and their supply of empty bottles!

Yes I can see it when I zoom in. Useful space you've got there. Maybe work bench and shelving on the right, brew on the left and seal the wall as best as possible with pvu glue/water mix? You say you don't want to draw attention - what are you going to do about lighting? Short of having the door open (and therefore people seeing what is going on) I can't see what you would do? How close do you live? Are you going to beef up locks? The only reason I ask is if you fill the space with expensive shiny brew stuff and have to expose that on a brew day there are unscrupulous sorts everywhere. It's an exiting project, and one I have considered here. My problem is the entrenched Guinness/Harp culture!!

ManseMasher said:

Yes I can see it when I zoom in. Useful space you've got there. Maybe work bench and shelving on the right, brew on the left and seal the wall as best as possible with pvu glue/water mix? You say you don't want to draw attention - what are you going to do about lighting? Short of having the door open (and therefore people seeing what is going on) I can't see what you would do? How close do you live? Are you going to beef up locks? The only reason I ask is if you fill the space with expensive shiny brew stuff and have to expose that on a brew day there are unscrupulous sorts everywhere. It's an exiting project, and one I have considered here. My problem is the entrenched Guinness/Harp culture!!

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Lighting - well, that's one reason for painting everything white actually - to brighten as much as possible.
And also, I saw this stuff a while back and I think it will work in conjunction with a 12V car/caravan battery
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007O4I34U/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Seems like that's 24W, which as 12V is 2amps. Looking at a pair of deep cycle batteries that are rated 7Ah, so lets say you can safely use 3/4 of that 14Ah = 10 hours of continuous running

I have a solar panel that I'll put up on the roof to keep the battery charged - as I'll only be brewing / bottling once a week, I think it will be fine

I'm also planning on running the extraction fan system off the same power - maybe bigger batteries will be best!
Edit: I think one of these 12cm fans on each airbrick will do the trick very well, only use 1.2A between then as well. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/gi-DC-12V...743?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2a4f742b3f

I will have the door rolled up somewhat I think - maybe for ventilation. For the time being, there will only be one shiny pot in there. Later on, I'll need a masher too, but could go with a cooler-box style one at this stage, I think.


Layout plan is for a sink (which I've got for free) on a frame on the right as you enter - as I can run a pipe down the drive where there is a useful drain.
Boiler/burner in the middle, at the back - with the air vents at either side
FVs on the left - away from external walls for heat control - also, possibly inside a filled back, again, more temp control.

It's a pain having that damp patch and I can't see how you could cure it completely from the inside but if you wait til it's dry weather could you not render over that part of the wall with something totally waterproof?
Having said that a bit of damp on one side of the garage should hardly interfere with brewing activities - I'm sure there's plenty of people on this forum who do their brewing in far worse conditions, I know I do. Only real problem I can see is that you would have problems storing grains in such damp conditions though if you buy them in as you need them and store what you have to in airtight plastic boxes (presumably as far away from the wet bit as possible) that might still be ok.
After all, as you say, it's not going to be a commercial brew setup.

Absolutely - damp I can live with, and the airtight containers is exactly what I'd planned.

Its the actual leaks that I need to deal with - on closer inspection, it basically needs re-pointing across the first 2 courses of bricks.

Another busy weekend.

Bought some tanking slurry - first of all make a thick batch, basically mortar and did some pointing where there were obvious gaps. Then thinned it as per instructions and put a coat on.
Came back the next day to find it hadn't dried - I guess that's inevitable as the soil behind it will still be wet. It is drying, albeit slowly.

So instead of putting the 2nd coat on, I put the first coat on the front half of the floor. Yes, the floor is in a sorry state, but its looking in a hell of a lot better already, IMO

From this:
1 Initial by Peter Richardson, on Flickr

To This:
IMG_20150517_144632 by Peter Richardson, on Flickr


Will definitely need 2 coats on the floor, as as its so pot-holed, its using twice as much paint as indicated on the tin - so going to have to grab another one. Will probably need to brush the 2nd coat on too, to get into all the nooks and crannies. Pretty much how I did the walls actually.

But not next weekend - Next weekend I get to drink my absolute favourite beer - Thornbridge Jaipur - as they do the bars at the Bearded Theory Festival :-)

Well, we had almighty rain and hail storms today, so thought I'd nip round and see if my waterproofing has worked.

Alas, no. But where the water had covered a few square meters last time, its a couple of very small puddles this time. I'd say there's 10% of the water in there now as there was on the day I found the issue. So hopefully, that means I'd making progress.

And I still need another 1 or 2 coats of the stuff.


Got my bathtub yesterday. Planning to keep that nearly full and place my FVs in it as some kind of temperature buffer

Haven't had much time lately, but finally spent a few hours in the garage today. Some small leaks still coming though, but now that its not a flood, they are easy to track back to the exact source.

So I've put a second coat of the tanking slurry on - much thicker mix this time. Hopefully that is the end of the water ingress issues.
Hoping to get at least the first coat on the floor complete by next weekend. Then its needs a full 2nd coat (which will take all day, as the floor is such a state - pitted hole everywhere, which take ages to get paint into)

Then I can start buying some actual brewing kit!

Success.

After a large amount of rain last night, the water ingress was extremely small. On top of the that, the coat I painted on has dried out.
I did find the source of the v. small leaks, and they have been filled and a final coat added where needed - but that's the end of the leak works.

Also got the first coat of the floor paint down today. It looks excellent. Just needs a second coat brushing in to get into all the pits in the concrete - it'll take a while, but then it'll be sealed and strong.

Happy that I've got some momentum back again. Might be 100% done with painting by the end of the weekend, which would be nice. I'd really like a crack at this brewing thing at some point.

Although electrics and joinery to be done before any of that sort of thing!!