This isn't really a record of building a distillery. It's more of a photo collection of the physical work that took place over the 12 months running from getting planning permission to producing some spirit.
So, no mention of the licensing, HAZOP studies, training, financing, brand design, and on, and on...all of which I can bore you with in person some time.
One thing I will return to in detail are the specific ways we've met the sustainability challenges of running a distillery. This project will hopefully not just be an exploration of that for its own sake, but serve as a template and guinea pig for all the new distilleries that follow us in the coming years. So i'll do my best to communicate those challenges and their solutions in future posts.
This is the Warehouse area before work started. Well, i'd done some exploratory work with a sledgehammer. You can see the stone runners of the Coach House floor where the cart wheels would have run, off the earth floor.
And this is the roof space. If it looks clean, believe me it was not. 100 years of plaster dust and squirrel droppings made for some unpleasant crawling about.
One bat survey, asbestos survey, structural survey later, out comes the ceiling and in go some collar tie beams to stiffen the structure before the ceiling beams come out.
Meanwhile, in the outside filth, eight cubic meters of clay makes way for a biodigester, which will munch through the liquid waste which can't be used as cattle feed.
This is one of the best bits of machinery i've ever seen; a kind of tank crossed with an old Massey Ferguson, it bored a hole from the Still House to the biodigester meaning the handsome victorian brick courtyard could lie undisturbed.
Here is the Warehouse building with much of the ceiling insulation & board in and most of the ceiling boards out. The stove has also gone in and all those beams will keep us warm for at least two years!
And here is yours truly taking some of the final beams out. This may or may not be a good demonstration of site safety practice.
Well we're getting there now! Painted, plumbed in, electrics starting to go in... A good old clean is needed though.
The production part of site completed and beginning to fill up with equipment. The Warehouse on left and Still House on right. But where is the STILL?
In here. Obvs.
And so began one of the most skillful demonstrations of telehandler operation you will ever see.
This is doctorate level telehandling. That bit in the air (reflux condenser & dephlegmator) weights about 350kg. I was having multiple anxiety attacks at this point.
But it all went together nicely (barring a few missing parts that has to follow on from Germany).
And after a long hard, but amazingly fun 12 months, here she is, ready to distil in, party in, feast in. See you here soon!