The construction of the $3 million Devil's Elbow Brewery at Dubbo has reached a major milestone with the installation of its brewhouse.
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About 15 massive pieces of stainless steel machinery weighing many tonnes were delivered to the Blueridge Business Park site after being constructed in Shenzhen, China.
Recent days have involved "lots of tricky manoeuvring with telehandlers and forklifts" to get the tanks and vessels into place inside the five-metre high brewhouse.
Once the system is plumbed in and powered up, brewing will start to have the first craft beers ready for a July 1 opening.
Devil's Elbow Brewery general manager Brendon O'Sullivan spoke to the Daily Liberal while standing on the purpose-built venue's floor, surrounded by a "sea of stainless steel".
"They [the vessels] are all over three metres high, some are as high as four and even five metres high," he said.
"So the brewhouse itself stands at about five metres high, but most of the vessels are at the 3.5 or 4 metre height range.
"These boys are big.
"And they hold anywhere between 1200 to 3000 litres of water or beer."
The cafe and microbrewery venture is the vision of four friends, Mr O'Sullivan, Paul and Melissa Knaggs, and David Rich, all Dubbo residents.
Blueridge Projects started construction of the 800-square metre development started earlier this year, and the majority of subcontractors have been local, the brewery reported.
More progress was made recently on the food side of the business with the arrival of the pizza oven, a "two tonne piece of machinery", from Italy.
The steam generator is also scheduled to arrive in the coming weeks.
"If you imagine the largest kettle you can, that's basically what it does, so it's a big electric steam generator that then heats up the mash tun," Mr O'Sullivan said.
Key recruitment Lachlan MacBean was also there to help with the task of setting up the machinery.
"Our head brewer's here at the moment, so he's overseeing the installation of the brewhouse," Mr O'Sullivan said.
"...He's already envisaging all his lovely beers he's going to have available for that patrons who come here."
More than 150 people applied for about 30 positions being created for the brewery's operation and interviews have started.
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