Join with us on our adventure as we build East Alstead's first brewery and what is quite possibly the only off-grid commercial brewery in the United States. We feel that what we brew and how we brew it are equally important. If you would like to help out with this project, contact me at: tim@belgianmare.com.




The Belgian Mare Says Hello!

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Breaking Ground

I must first apologize for being a bit lax in updating this blog. These are busy times and I let things slide when I should not have. Hopefully I can make up for that by having something really worth writing about.

We have broken ground on the brewery! A bit over a week ago, Lonn Livengood brought out his excavator and his worker, Bob Diehl, started digging. I had visions of having a big ground breaking ceremony, maybe with a gold painted shovel. In the end, Bob jumped in the excavator and I took some pictures. Not much ceremony at all.

Two interesting artifacts were unearthed during the digging. The first to show up is a quart whiskey bottle for Petts whiskey out of Boston. It has a small chip but is otherwise intact. A bit of internet searching indicated this bottle may be over 100 years old. I wonder if there is greater meaning to this find? Is this a sign?

The second item is a bronze cow bell! The knocker is missing, otherwise it is in very good shape. I checked a reference book and it had a picture of a nearly identical bell and described it as a 19th century Norwegian cow bell.

Maybe we should name this the Bottle and Bell Brewery?

It only took a few days for Lonn and Bob to finish the cellar hole and put in an access road. This morning the concrete guys showed up. They put in the footings and the frost wall. This upcoming Tuesday we will be getting together to pour the walls. So now I am out beating the bushes for volunteers.

This is all moving so fast! Sometimes it is exciting, sometimes gutwrenchingly frightening.

Dear Reader, as we progress I will keep you posted.

Below are photos of the work so far:

Before work...

New access road...
Ready for concrete...
The footings....




2 comments:

  1. Woohoo! My dad says he saw work going on over there, and it looks like much progress has been made! Congrats, Tim. By the way, you oughta make that NE Cream Lager your flagship, no?

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  2. Thanks Owen! We pour the cellar walls tomorrow!

    I have definitely considered making the NE Cream the flagship.

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