(continued from our previous post)
The Aeronaut brewhouse would lie in wait for several months before we’d find its new home. We finally found our location at Tyler Street, complete with a real loading dock. All we had to do was get the brewhouse to the door and bring it in. At that point, it didn’t occur to us that the brewhouse would be taller than our loading dock door.
We journeyed down to Mansfield to make a final survey of the brewing equipment before getting it up to the brewery. We had the shipping container lifted onto a truck bed, and it was then brought to the loading bay at Aeronaut.
When it arrived, things started smoothly enough. We got the large fermenters out of the way and were able to start moving the brewhouse to the loading dock doors. As we got close, we became concerned that the tallest pipes on the brewhouse wouldn’t clear the doorway. They measured a little over nine feet tall, but the doorway was a little under nine feet. It was just a small pipe that needed to fit, but it just wasn’t going to happen. We were stuck.
We were wondering, would we have to send the truck home? Would we need a crane? A rigging team? Would we have to cut the brewhouse in half and reassemble it? Then…a stroke of brilliance! We just needed to angle that small pipe under the door and there would be plenty of clearance. But how to get the 1500-pound brewhouse angled under the doorway? We called in a very large tow truck with a flatbed.
It was easy enough to drag the brewhouse onto the bed of the tow truck. Then, we had to just secure it and angle the brewhouse downward and slowly pull it forward until the pipes cleared the doorway and then angle it back. It actually worked! There were a few scary moments there, but the brewhouse made it through and we pulled it into the brewery. It was immediately right at home.
