Schooner Exact Brewing Co.

Pint glasses are available!

We just wanted to get a quick note out to our fans that we do have pint glasses available. All you have to do is send us an email and we will get you the info. Come on down, check out the brewery, buy a couple of glasses to take home, maybe even a growler while you're at it! We understand a few of you have gotten a little creative about acquiring our glasses, and while flattering, we would much rather you just purchased them from us. T-shirts and stickers are on the way too!

Full time at West 5

So, as I am sure you can imagine, we do not have a huge marketing budget and have been relying on word of mouth and a little web buzz to keep interest in what we are doing up. One of the toughest things is that given our size, most people that are into craft beer really want to support us and think what we are doing is great. However, we always get the question, "that's great, so where can I try it?" Until now, that has not been an easy question to answer. We always just told people about the blog and let them know that we would post where we are and when on there. Well, our jobs just got a little easier. Our friends over at West 5 Lounge in West Seattle have decided to pick us up full time for at least the next few months. We have been there on a rotating basis for a while and the popularity with both the customers and the staff has gotten us our very position in the line up. This is a pretty big deal for us as it is our first full time tap, and has come a lot sooner than we had expected. Thanks to everyone that has stopped by there for a pint and thanks for West 5 for giving us a shot!

Next couple of weeks

Tonight we are dropping off a keg of 3 Grid IPA at West 5 in West Seattle and will be sending another their way in a few days so be sure to look for us there over the weekend. We should be on line there by Friday night so start that weekend happy hour off right!

Next Thursday, the 26th be sure to drop by the Beveridge Place Pub to have a sample of our special, one of a kind, Imperial 3 Grid IPA, naturally carbonated, cask conditioned, and dry hopped as we help them celebrate IPApril! We would also like to extend a special thanks to all the folks that blew through the keg we had there earlier this month in just a couple of days. Nice to know that we are tops with the home town crowd!

Schooner Exact celebrates IPApril at the Beveridge Place Pub

This month at the Beveridge Place Pub it's IPApril where they are celebrating the glorious hop with a run of many different IPAs on tap all month long. We will be delivering a keg of our renowned 3 Grid IPA to them later this week so be sure to stop by and enjoy. Later this month, on the 26th, we will be having a brewer's night there. We will have another keg of 3 Grid available as well as a specially brewed cask of Imperial 3 Grid, dry hopped and naturally fermented goodness. This is going to be a special one, we were able to take a little taste of it the other day right out of the fermenter and we could not put it down! Of course, that is before the dry hop, so this will be one to write home about. Be careful as it will come with a little extra punch, but be sure you don't miss this one! It will be a fun night all around with a couple of give aways and all the other IPAs they have there as well. Come join us for a good time and some great beer!

#3 is up and running

A couple of days ago we were able to brew after work. A nice batch of 3 Grid IPA is currently bubbling away in fermenter #3. We felt a real sense of accomplishment, after dealing with all of the issues with getting the new chilling system designed and installed, the new cold box built, the right fittings on the new fermenter, and still finding time to brew. The brew itself went smoothly, and the little differences in the new fermenter are nice. The butterfly valve on the bottom is a very nice piece, smooth action and actually swings the opposite direction from our others which is nice since we have a thermometer and a O2 stone that kinda gets in the way with the others. We deal, but having this set up is just one less thing to worry about. It is a gorgeous piece of hardware on the whole, shiny and stainless with the machining marks still on it. Happy times.

Keepin it cool

So we have not been around much lately, but never fear, we are still hard at work. Pretty much every night for the last couple of weeks we have been working on some upgrades to the brewery so that we can continue to bring you the beer that you love. We are expanding our capacity by adding two more fermenters, doubling our capacity. We have a glycol temperature regulation system in place so that we can control the fermentation temperature as well as cold crash the beer once it's done to get all the yeast out. Our previous system was barely hanging on with only two fermenters going and would never be able to four that we would soon be using. We decided to not only go bigger but also to redesign the entire system. One of the problems we ran into was that the old chiller was right next to the fermenters and created quite a bit of heat, which just means it needs to work that much harder. We built an insulated cold box for the fermenters, and that helped a bit. However, we decided to put the new chiller all the way across on the other side of there brewery to keep that area as cool as possible. This means we had to run long, insulated supply and return lines which was a little tougher than we had expected. After a couple of design changes a bit of swearing we got everything together and it's running great! Just in time too since we just took delivery on fermenter number three and number four is only a month or so away.

Also, all of this expansion means we would be outgrowing our space rather quickly if we didn't move some things around. We were coming dangerously close to having almost no square footage left. Luckily, we do have nice tall ceilings. So we (ok, Matt) built a loft above the fermentation area which allowed us to get a lot of storage stuff off the main floor and put it up above. We put our kegs, jockey boxes and covers, tools and other randomness up there so we have some room to move. You can take a look at the pics from our first brew and compared to now the place looks absolutely empty. We will be getting some pics of the current state of the place in the next couple of days, as well as the new fermenter! Stay tuned!

More beer!

That's right kids, MORE BEER! We just took delivery on our third fermenter and will be putting it on line in a couple of days. What does that mean to you? It means that our production capacity has just grown by 50% and we will be able to get out to more places and you will be able to enjoy Schooner Exact's fine libations more often! Great news! Thanks to Bob at Bob's Homebrew Supply for getting it done for us. It looks great!

On tap at Uber, West 5 coming up

Just a quick note about where you can find us. We found out the Uber put 3 Grid IPA on tap last night, so swing by one of the best alehouses in Seattle and enjoy! We also spoke with the guys from West 5 earlier today. We will be delivering our 3 Grid IPA to them in next day or so and should be online this weekend. Remember that we are always in very limited supply so be sure to call ahead for best results. Cheers!

Release party pics are up

So we finally got around to posting the release party pics so you can all see what you missed or if you made it see if you got into one of the group shots. Those of you that have ever been the the Beveridge Place can see from the pics how packed the place was.

In other news, we picked up the body of one of the new fermenters yesterday. To keep costs down we are going to do a little of the finishing work ourselves. They will be the same model that we are currently using, so it lacks a little of that new toy feeling, but we are still very stoked to up our capacity and be able to support a larger network of ale houses for you, our adoring fans. Over the next few weeks we will also be setting up our new chilling system that will be able to support more fermenters as well as adding another fridge for our secondary clearing stage. The space is starting to get a little tight, but we will also be building a storage loft soon, so a lot of the stuff that is currently "in the way" will go up there and we can get some of our square footage back for day to day use.

We will also soon have some more concrete news on what beer festivals we will be attending as festival time is approaching soon. So stay tuned!

Beer news and availability

Just wanted to say a quick hello to all the people that may have come across us due to the recent mention in either Celebrator (thanks Don) and/or Northwest Brewing News (thanks Dave). Please feel free to take a look around and stop by often and see the exciting things happening at Schooner Exact! If you are wondering where you might be able to find us, well the last keg of Hoppy Holidays Winter Ale for the season said goodbye last night at the Beveridge Place Pub. However, you can currently get a nice refreshing pint of our Regrade Pale while there. Coming up in the very near future look for us at Uber as early as later this week. We have also been talking with the guys at West 5 here in West Seattle. Our 3 Grid IPA should be available there in early march. We will get more accurate details on the Uber and West 5 availability as it comes.