Behind the plastic

If you've been past our building recently, you may have noticed we put up painter's plastic on all the windows and I'm excited to report that there is a MAJOR TRANSFORMATION happening behind it! Ok, that's an exaggeration since we actually haven't yet received our building permits, but we did make some great progress this past weekend to prepare the space for renovations. About 25 of our friends and family members rolled up their sleeves this past Saturday and helped us rip out hundreds of feet of DSL cables, clear out planters, move dirt, knock down a small section of drywall where we're going to put a door, and take down all the wood from the mezzanine (but don't worry - it's going back up after we do structural work). It's amazing what many hands can accomplish in just a few short hours!

Check out the progress!

BEFORE

AFTER

After the job was done, a few of us stayed at the building to watch a movie we projected on the wall and then strolled down to the Pint Sized Lounge for a beer. Doesn't beer always taste better when you've earned it?

NEXT STEPS

We can't start construction until we get approval from both the Marin County Environmental Health Department and the San Rafael Building Department, so Trevor has been working tirelessly to get our plans submitted. We've already received one round of comments back from the San Rafael Building Department which required some changes and then we found out we needed to provide material samples to the Health Department - as in, a posterboard with little pieces of the exact materials we'll use (bathroom floor tile, bar top, etc). We thought we'd have months to figure that out as construction progressed... not the case! These delays push our construction start date to possibly as late as April. We submitted to the Health Department today, so everyone cross their fingers for speedy reviews so we can start sooner!

What we've been brewing

We recently finished off kegs of our Munich Dunkel and Juicy IPA and Trevor is tinkering with a stout recipe he's calling "Tres Amigos" - this one is a joint effort with a couple friends and it incorporates tequila, coffee, and oak... yum! A couple weeks ago, Pond Farm Brewing got to participate in a collaboration brew with the North Bay Brewer's Guild at Henhouse Brewing up in Santa Rosa. It's a take on a classic West Coast style IPA called Instant Classic and it will be released in February for SF Beer Week. We'll send out an update with info on where to find it soon.

Cheers, Stephanie