The latest "expansion project" at Oakshire

On Tuesday a long truck from Alberta Canada rolled up to the brewery. On his trailer sat our new “little” baby. A 48,000 lb capacity silo that will house our 2-row malted barley. This recent acquisition is a huge step in growing our little brewery here in Eugene. Not only does it relieve a bit of the manual labor needed in our brewhouse, but it also allows us to buy bulk malt at a significant savings. I’ve got to tell you, as much as I (Matt) am happy about the latter benefit, I’m REALLY happy about the former. You see for the last 3.5 years, brewers at Oakshire have carried 50-55 lb. bags up a step stool and into our mill. This crushed the grain into buckets that we had to drag across the length of the building and then hand-bucket 5 gallons at a time into our first tank, the mash tun. Now when Oakshire (then Willamette Brewing) was in it’s infancy (we’re toddlers now, but outgrowing our jeans fairly fast) it was no real issue to mill the 200-250 lbs and get it in the mash tun, but now that we are brewing on a 15 barrel system, our grain bills are 750-1100, and with an 80 barrel fermenter to fill with Watershed IPA, that means 5500 lbs one bag at a time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m probably a little lighter around the midsection than the day I showed up, but as we crank into our summer busy season, this little piece of automation was needed. We’ll get some augers hooked up to move the grain and a grist case which holds the milled malt until the brewer is ready to add water and then we’ll really be able to get some beer out to you! So, as always, thank you for helping us make the dream a reality. Without your loyalty and support, we don’t get to have this pretty silo with our log on it. Here’s a few more pictures from the install day, including the bottle of beer Jeff broke over it to “christen her”. (We had a Champagne bottle, but we decided to drink that instead!) Cheers!