The Brewery is back in production!!!!

Where have we been…

Well, it has been about 10 months since our last blog entry. No,we didn’t have a baby…we are both too old for that! But, we did have a major home remodel that sent us back quite a bit along with the death of our beloved brew dog, Jack. To say that life has gone in a thousand different unexpected directions is an understatement. But, we are officially BACK and BREWING!!!!

So, after a long hiatus, you may wonder….how do you get back into it? Well, we decided to start with reorganizing and restructuring our brewing space. While remodeling our 1951 house, we decided to also renovate our garage which is our brewery. The biggest change was a newly poured garage floor as our old garage floor leaked terribly. The other big change was changing our traditional garage door with two new roll up style doors. This allowed us to gain more headroom in our brewery and allows us to only open one side of the garage at a time. Now we have no more water pooling up in our brewery and the ability to utilize our space more efficiently.

---

During the remodel, we also said goodbye to our original keezer. We like to repair and reuse as much as possible; unfortunately, repairing the motor would have cost more than building a new keezer. Sadly, our keezer had to go. The good news is losing the keezer gave us the idea to designate the back of our garage solely for our keezer, freezer, and fridge space. We decided to turn our large keg storage freezer into a new serving/storage keezer. We installed 8 taps and new spring loaded taps. We also kept one of our other keezers at home with 4 taps for water dispensing (still and sparkling) and seltzer/gluten free beer taps (coming soon). By restructuring our taps a bit, we were able to keep our last 4 tap keezer in storage as a back up. ​

Once we put together our keezers, the first step was to organize and inventory our hops and yeast followed by deep cleaning and sanitizing our brewing equipment. We decided to keep our house more organized by keeping a small storage unit nearby for brewing equipment we don’t need as frequently—jockey boxes, jockey box cover, keg coolers, extra kegs, signage, aluminum cans, packing material, and so on. Utilizing our storage unit has allowed us to have more space in our home shed to store brewing equipment we don’t use all the time—Duofiller, Oktober Canning Machine, Beer Bot Fermenters, pub games, etc.--along with finding a place outside the brewery to store our e-bikes. Keeping things organized and tidy meant we also said goodbye to our beer cart. We find it is pretty easy to store the brewing pots on a rack (our 20 gallon pots are stored inside our 50 gallon pots) and move out the propane burners for each boil. Our RO water storage we house outside the garage. We fill the 50 gallon storage tank quickly with 2 RO water filters running concurrently (we use the RO water for brewing and to fill our kegs of water for dispensing).

After taking inventory, organizing, and cleaning the brew space, we found we had a bit of maintenance to take care of. We purchased some new small items--gaskets, O rings, keg lube--and began the process of making sure everything was still working. Then, finally after a few weeks of working on the brewery, we got to brewing! So, what did we decide to brew first….an IPA of course! IPAs are our favorites and what we wanted to drink. So, we decided to make a double IPA, full of hops and even a hop shot!  At the time we started brewing, we didn’t know it would be the last brew day with Jack. His death was devastating. Truthfully, we initially were so heartbroken, we didn’t want to brew anymore and almost dropped out of the Craft Beer Long Beach Homebrew Invitational. After taking a step back and taking some time to grieve, we realized we have brewed long before Jack (he’s our second brew dog…our long time friends remember our amazing boy Frankie!). However, our contest brew of Majestic Jack was not our original beer choice for the invitational, but it seemed like a great way to celebrate Jack’s amazing life with us while enjoying one of our favorite brews. For inquiring minds, our plan was to brew what is now Majestic Jack for our Spring Break consumption and have a few of our other beers on tap--a Pilsner, Tropical Stout, Bourbon Barrel Porter, and a new iteration of Basic Bitch Brown (maybe call it The Bitch is Back?). But, those will wait.

So, what is on tap for us this year at 2JBC. Well, full disclosure, 2024 has sucked so far! We lost Jack and Mike’s Grandma Beth, and we’ve been sick! We are hoping the rest of the year goes much better and brings about more happiness. We joined Long Beach Homebrewers with the hope of perfecting our brew process and entering more contests. Mike and I have always brewed for us and not categories, so we are hoping to learn how to make more stylized beers. Don’t fret, though, we aren’t abandoning our flavor bomb approach, we are just going to be mixing in specific beers brewed for contests and not just for our own drinking pleasure. We are also diving into the world of gluten free brewing a bit. Our hope is that at next year’s Craft Beer Long Beach Competition we will be able to showcase two beers side by side, one a regular beer and one gluten free, to show that homebrewers really can brew everything. 

In the meantime, we are excited to attend this Saturday’s Craft Beer Long Beach Homebrew Invitational. We fell in love with greyhounds and beer, so we love the opportunity to showcase both. We are excited to see friends and fellow brewers at the contest and see what creative endeavors everyone has come up with. We have a renewed excitement for the craft of brewing and a new desire to move away from negativity. Unfortunately, we have recently had to say goodbye to my grandfather Jack, Mike’s Aunt Pat, Mike’s Grandmother Beth, and our Greyhound Jack. As my Scottish grandfather would say, “May the wind be always at your back, May the sun shine warm upon your face, May the rain fall softly upon your fields until we meet again, And may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.” Until we meet again, we will smile at your memories and raise a glass in your honor. 

Here’s to making new memories and meeting new friends in 2024!
2JBC

​