Since our last post a lot has happened and nothing's happened. Our biggest project right now is moving for the third time to what will hopefully be our final resting spot in Charlestown, Ma. This will cut our commute down an hour. I can see our building out of my bedroom window. It's a great spot, and we're excited to get it up an running. Our first project, installing our cooler (needed for cold storage of inventory), has been a complete disaster, so while we expected to be fully up and running by now, we just have a whole bunch of cooler panels and tools lying around. That, and a lot of pent up rage. Imagine a puzzle where your goal is to take a bunch of different sized pieces and make a cube. The pieces all lock together with a latch on one panel, with a corresponding hook and an adjacent panel. Now figure that out, except the pieces are all big, heavy, and break way too easily for how big and heavy they are. And, to get a professional to put it together costs almost as much as the unit itself, which is unfortunate because our money tree still isn't blooming, leaving us high and dry. It's all very upsetting, and just typing this is making me a dangerous combination of angry and sad, so I'll move on...
Once the piece-of-equipment-which-must-not-be-named is up and running, we'll move our tanks over and basically resume what we have going right now in Leominster. Once we catch our breath, it's time for expansion. Our new canning line is set to arrive late February, at which point we'll start to battle operational bottlenecks as they come. This will include more kegs, larger fermenters, a new brite, and the million and one other pieces of processing equipment like chillers, air compressors, condensers, etc. Thinking about all of these non-sexy, but very expensive things is making me angry and sad again, so I'll move on...
Aside from the moving stuff, we're doing our best to keep Downeast rolling in the right direction. We're working on a couple exciting new things for this spring, but they're kind of super-secret. This probably isn't a very exciting update, I think the cold weather is draining us. We'll be more fun when the sun comes out.
--Downeast
