For the last couple of months I’ve been working at a side job - head brewer at Bluebird Brewing in Seattle. It’s a part time thing, working on a 2 BBL system. We’ve got a couple of 3 bbl glycol chilled conicals that are nice, but mostly it is an oversized homebrew system. MM3, March pump, propane burners, etc. Kegging in 1/2 bbl sankes.
Bluebird is better known for ice cream - there are three shops around Seattle. The brewing system is in the back of one of them. We haven’t started selling beer yet, there was a ton to do to get it all up and running, and like I said it’s a part time thing. I finished hooking up an 8 product trunk line this weekend - 4 will be beer, and 4 soda (it’s an ice cream shop after all). The beers will mostly be geared towards things that go well with ice cream, for making floats and stuff - they’re really popular.
We’ll start selling our beer in one location this Thursday. The beers will be our coffee porter, strong blonde, and chocolate stout, plus a guest tap of pale ale. The sodas will be our rootbeer, cream soda, snickerdoodle soda, and a guest tap of ginger beer.
I’m not sure when we’ll put our beer on at the second location. It already has 8 taps and has been selling other people’s beer for a year or two, but I’ll convert 4 of them for soda and we’ll save 3 taps for our beers. The third location will have to wait until we find some coolers (for the right price) we can use for the beer.
The first two beers (coffee porter, strong blond) were brewed by the guy who set up the system, a pro brewer who is friends with the owner. He got the system installed and did a couple of test batches, then turned it over to me. We’ve since added the two conicals, rebuilt the mill table, installed the draft system, and a bunch of other small projects. And be “we” I mean me. The first batch I did was the chocolate stout - it was served at a beer festival this weekend and got 3rd place (out of ~60 beers) in the people’s choice voting.
It’s a one-man show, and it’s been a lot of work, but I’m having fun!
