Building Aeronaut: Our brewhouse (pt. 1)

We’ve been through some interesting adventures to get Aeronaut off the ground. Our mission to gather up all the equipment for the brewery brought us to some interesting places and introduced us to even more interesting people. The kettles, fermenters and large pieces of equipment here each have a story to tell. Our brewhouse (the kettles and platform) in particular, came here on a long and strange journey.

We originally found our brewhouse at a small brewery in Florida that no longer needed it. It had served them well, and the owner was ready to see it off to a good home.

Our brewhouse in its original Florida habitat
Our brewhouse in its original Florida habitat

We flew down to Florida to check out the brewhouse. There, we gave it a test brew (a porter) with the former owner and were quite pleased! We decided to take it up to Somerville. Before that, we hit up the local brewing scene and had an awesome behind-the scenes tour of Cigar City with some very tasty brews. We also watched a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral (and chanced upon a manatee!) before getting the kettles ready for their journey. The 1500-pound brewhouse was rigged up and loaded onto a shipping container. From there, it was trucked over to a depot to be loaded onto a train. It made its journey north by rail.

Our brewhouse journeyed by train from FL to MA
Our brewhouse journeyed by train from FL to MA

Once arriving in Mansfield, MA, the brewhouse was put into storage, where it remained for months as we searched for its new home.  Our visits to Mansfield always reminded us of a scene from Breaking Bad.

Checking up on our brewhouse.
Checking up on our brewhouse.

There would still be quite a journey in store for our brewhouse, let alone getting it out of the shipping container.  Find out what happens in the second half of the story