Earning My Beer in Eola

Mark Cannon, owner of Eola School and Bright Brewing, has been asking me to stop by for some beer. I think I've only been twice this year. We changed our schedule at work, so I don't have the long weekends I used to to visit Satan in Midland, consequently, fewer stops in Eola.

Last week, I finally decided that I needed to go to Eola and visit with Mark. There was still a little snow on the ground from the previous week's storm, and even though it would get up to 40°, I knew it would be chilly in the old school. Mark told me about how hard it was to get his beer to sell in other locations. He didn't think the staff was doing enough to sell the beer.

I had a few beers. His Farmhouse Ale is good. It has a little spice to it. He also had a Belgian Quad on tap. It was a bit thin, but had a nice, complex flavor with some fruitiness.  He poured me a cup of stout. That was the best beer of the lot, with lots of roast in the aroma and flavor.

Then he showed me his in-progress expansion.  Mark's brew house is in the old science class room, on the north side of the building. He is building a fermentation chamber across the hall. He bought some 4'x12' insulated panels that are used to make walk in coolers. He had already assembled three panels to make a back wall, and attached one panel perpendicularly at each end, like a large "C". There was a 3 foot space behind the box that he could get into and clean. He asked me to help him move a sixth panel into the budding fermentation chamber, to make two fermentation chamber. It was a little too tall, so Mark decided the grind down the metal couplings at the top.

Then Mark decided to push the chamber against the wall, and we walked the thing back to wall an inch at a time. Finally a couple of guys stopped by to help Mark do exactly what we'd been doing all afternoon. Naturally, being lazy, I watched as the three of them got that middle panel in, turning the "C" into an "E".

Since I only had the one day off, I decided to leave at a quarter to three and head back home. This morning, I discovered a splinter in my thumb. It's in just the perfect spot that hurts when I write with a pen.

Mental note: bring work gloves the next time I go to Eola.