Great Raft Brewing details brewery construction, announces flagship beers

We love it when a plan comes together. Earlier in the year, we spoke with the owners at Louisiana-based Great Raft Brewing as they started on their journey to open up their first larger-scale brewery and tasting room. They have been updating their progress along the way, which acts as a good reminder that building the vision of your own brewery is both exciting and exhausting.

From the brewery’s blog:

On July 11, we signed our agreement with local mechanical contractor DMR. From the beginning, DMR embraced our visionary approach and helped define solutions along the way. They brought a solid mechanical understanding and resourcefulness to our project and began working immediately. Our support structure for supplying steam, water and glycol to our tanks is already in place. The crews are roughing in massive amounts of steam piping and pvc from the mechanical room to the brewhouse.

Some more good advice from the blog:

Maintaining water and providing drainage is key. Harvey often says “if it’s hard to clean, it won’t get cleaned.” This sentiment rings true for brewers on any scale. In the next week we will install trenching, start to finalizing plumbing, install our 600+ sq ft walk in cooler and install our massive fan from the fine folks in Lexington, Ky., at Big Ass Fans.

At this point, Great Raft has dug trenches, installed piping, poured concrete, torn down and re-built walls, erected a cooler, ordered raw materials and processed a lot of paperwork. For those interested in following the birth of this brewery, stay tuned for more updates on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Beyond all of the nitty-gritty tasks, there are still fun beer announcements to make, like the flagship lineup that will start appearing within the company’s footprint year-round on draft and in cans:

Southern Drawl — This will be a hop forward lager with complex, citrusy aromas derived from German hops and wheat phenols.  Great Raft will use its house German lager strain to provide a fresh backdrop for this perfect session lager.

Commotion — This pale ale has a slightly fruity aroma, with an upfront hop bitterness of grapefruit and citrus. This complex but balanced dry-hopped ale is faintly sweet, but soft through the generous amounts of wheat.

Reasonably Corrupt — A black lager with dark and roasty malt sweetness. Don’t let the darkness fool you — this is a sweeter, fuller-bodied version of the premium lager you know and love. It has a smooth, crisp finish, with depth of color and taste.