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!

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Accountant & Solar & Aggie

Due to a brief illness and and spending some time working with the horses, I have not got much done on the brewery since the last post. However, we did meet last night with an accountant. This was a very edifying meeting. We discussed the structure of the business, financing, taxes and many other things. I was greatly heartened to hear that my ideas for the structure of the business met with the accountant's approval. I had put a lot of work into the business structure, but I am no professional, so it was nice to have someone in the know give it the stamp of approval. So it looks the brewery will be an LLC that rents space from the farm.

The second part of today's entry, has to do with power supply. From the start we have wanted to be as off-grid as possible. Finding the necessary tools to accomplish that has proved problematic. Today, at work, I met a customer who has been living off-grid for the last fifteen years, or thereabouts. He showed me how a relatively small and simple solar-electric system can provide enough power to do all the pumping and lighting we will need at the brewery.

The only problem would be heating the sales area in winter. We came up with some ideas of using the boiler to do this. The drawback, would be that anything that could not be allowed to freeze would need to be put in the cellar each night. However, since we are not sure yet if the brewery would be open to the public in winter, this might not be a problem.

So, any way you slice it, I have got a lot of new ideas to consider for the brewery.

Here is a bonus:

Last Sunday we hitched Aggie to a two-wheeled forecart for the first time. She had been doing so well with the ground work that we felt it was time to try a wheeled vehicle. Well...

Hooking her up went well. Then when Roy asked her to go, she started bucking and ran through a ditch. Somehow Roy held on and got her stopped. Then he walked her out to his back pasture and drove her around for a while. She definitely does not like downhills, which lends weight to the theory that she got he scars in a cart accident. She really began to relax as time went on and, overall, the training went very well. We still have a way to go, but it was a successful day.


First Day In Harness

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