Beer shots by Adam Milliron

Some gorgeous new photos of General Braddock’s IPA and White Sky, shot by local food photographer Adam Milliron.

Groundbreaking

concrete saw, jackhammer, digging bar, shovel

Taproom Ideabook

It feels great to be back in the swing of things and doing construction. We’re rather excited about renovating our taproom space, and now that we’ve put a subfloor down and removed the plaster walls to expose the brick behind it, we can properly visualize what we want the whole thing to look like.

We’d love for the taproom to have a very Braddock-esque feel to it: brick, wood, and tin ceiling. Combine this with the burnt orange, charcoal grey, and white color scheme of our brand, and out comes some mix of modern, rustic, and industrial. Repurposed building materials lend a bit of contrast to our predominantly clean brand.

Here’s a look at our taproom ideabook so far. This is our brainstorm - a series of photos that inspire us, whether it’s the entire feel of the room or a specific bar stool or light fixture. We will continue to add to this gallery over the course of the renovation, and we want to show you all what’s going through our heads in real time. Like all design projects, this entire thing is subject to immediate and drastic change at any moment, so keep an eye out for updates.

Taproom Reset

crowbar, digging bar, ladder, broom, shovel, circular saw, paint roller, drill

Clean-Out, Redux

ratchet, wrench, drill, angle grinder, broom

The Ol’ Switcheroo

Good news, everyone!

In the wake of our successful Kickstarter and a number of other small victories, we’ve decided to expand our plans a bit. Our issue, however, is that the ceilings in our current space at 800 Braddock Ave. are much too low to house a larger brewing system.

Fortunately, we’ve already found a building just down the street that is a much better fit: the old Harco Electric building, located at 514 Braddock Ave. With a spacious brewing area, a much better layout for a taproom, and more convenient parking, the Harco building is an big upgrade on a number of levels. Although our time spent at 800 Braddock Ave. was an excellent learning experience and provided a space for us to make early progress, we can’t say we’ll miss having house centipedes the size of hamsters skittering around everywhere.

We will be moving into our new space and beginning our buildout over the next few months. If everything magically falls into place and goes according to our ridiculously optimistic timeline, we should be rolling our first kegs out the door by July. Between now and then, we’ll be seeking more financing, renovating our space, getting our licensing, and installing equipment.

We’ll do some architectural drawings of our projected space over the next few weeks. For now, here’s a few pictures of the Harco building as it currently stands. We hope you all enjoy renovation photos, because we’re about to have a hell of a lot more of them.

Pre-Construction Panorama

Things are going really well for us at the moment. A lot of awesome things are coming together all at once, which means that things are going to get very crazy, very quickly. We’ll give a more exhaustive update on all of that next week, but for now, here’s a little project we did.

As a thank you to everyone who’s contributed to our Kickstarter campaign thus far, we’ve put together a panorama of our facility, pre-construction. A lot of you have been asking about the space, so we figured this was a good way to let folks check it out. As you can see, it’s pretty sparse at the moment… but we’ve got a lot of space to work with, and some pretty ambitious plans.

Wrap-Up – Tapped: Braddock

Saturday was exhilarating.

Tapped: Braddock was, in no uncertain terms, an enormous success. It was a gorgeous fall afternoon, with almost 2000 people making it out to Braddock over the course of the day. We got to pour more than 750 samples of White Sky and General Braddock’s IPA, got to talk to a lot of awesome folks, and got to eat some excellent food… all to the sounds of an impressive reggae marathon from local band Man in the Street.

Tapped: Braddock was a big milestone for us. It was the first major event that we had a hand in planning, along with the incredible help of Bar Marco and Epic Development. But more importantly, the event signified what happens when we receive nothing but assistance and encouragement from all parties involved. With so many people helping along the way, we had a ton of freedom to do what we wanted to do.

Although we haven’t had the chance to meet with the rest of the guys and debrief yet, I have a feeling that the Tapped pop-up beer garden series will be back next year. And if we’re lucky, Tapped: Braddock can be an even grander finale next year. Who knows where we’ll be by then.

Post-Hartwood Wrap-up

As expected, Chef Jon Holzer and The Hartwood Restaurant did a phenomenal job once again at Tuesday’s dinner. Turnout was solid, the food was fantastic, everyone in attendance responded extremely positively, and we came equipped with sexy new brochures (printed neither on the CMU printers nor on the morning of the event).

One interesting side note was the inclusion of a beer cocktail made with Boyd & Blair Vodka, lemon juice, and White Sky. Both of us currently also work at upscale restaurants with interesting and well-developed cocktail programs, and cocktails are another type of craft that we’re beginning to become more interested and involved in. Of course beer is our main focus, but cocktails are an interesting and related extra-curricular. So tasting a beer cocktail made with our own beer for the first time was both a.) a rather cool experience, and b.) a springboard for our overactive imaginations to start developing other ideas. We’ve been infusing a bottle of Wigle Rye with chai spices (the same mix that we put in our White Sky) for celebratory consumption upon the sale of our first keg, but it smells beyond freaking delicious and it’s getting extremely difficult not to break into it early and start experimenting with more White Sky cocktails. It may be a pipe dream, but it’d be cool if we could offer a small but well-crafted beer cocktail menu in our taproom alongside the beer. Time to buy a few books.

Foie Gras and Sweet Potato Pierogi with Sweet Glazed Shrimp, Kim Chi, and Bok Choy / White Sky

Melon Balls Wrapped in Prosciutto with Thai Basil / Beer Cocktail

Herb Crusted Pork Tenderloin with Raspberry Ketchup and Pork Rillette with Fig Jam / General Braddock’s IPA

Housemade Chocolate Pretzel Tart with Seasonal Berries / Chef’s own homebrewed Java Stout

New Brochures

With Tapped: Braddock and our Kickstarter coming up, we needed some new promo material. This is what we came up with.