MOC: Winter Village Brewery

Yeah, it's this time of the year again! Wait, it is not. Or well, that might be a bit odd statement. But hey, it's several degrees plus outside (with our Celsius system - That's logical, in fact) and misty and rains a lot (water). But it's still almost Christmas (I'm not in the mood due to the weather though), I've watched the new Star Wars and this is my entry for Eurobricks's Expand The Winter Village Contest VI. As humorous side note, I also took part of their first such contest in 2010 with this Cáfe... Look a those glorious quality photographs! Oh boy...

Yeah, the contest. The prizes are quite awesome, so I'm going to be honest and say they motivated me to build this. This is a brewery. Small ale breweries seem to be popular right now. Coincidence? I think so. This is brewery/pub due my recent trip in Britain with few chums which included nice amount of sitting inna pub. Bennets Bar in Edinburgh was particularly pleasant one and one of the high points of our journey.

I know there would be a bar counter with taps, dark red chairs, brewing containers with pipes (which I know nothing about, though), publican's apartment on upstairs, and last but not least, three old geezers outside the pubs with pints. They exist everywhere. I'm sure you'll find them in any of the seventy-three corners of the multiverse. And then there would be the vehicle, because several of Winter Village sets have one, and I like old cars.

I began building with pub's floor. It uses old good "45 degree 1x1 bricks and tiles stuck between them" technique to make an interesting pattern. The colors are white and yellow (beer) that nicely brighten the room. The brewery side followed. Walls ended up being sand green with LUBGULKed masonry bricks; I have quite lot of them, though most of them ended up in this. Some earthly colors (tan, reddish brown, bleys, greys) were used here too make some architectural and promotional details; The sign read "ALE" because it was only beer-related word with thee letters I came up with. It also means sale or discount in Finnish, and I suppose it'll cause confusion on Finnish exhibits.

After a while I realised it had to have a tower. My buildings usually end up with a tower. I like towers. There are not many buildings with towers in Finland, especially in my hometown, which is rather recent one with little or no history; In 1600s there were two occupied houses; A true story.

I think the tower makes sense as it can be used to store malt used in brewing and also makes the pub visible in the village, being sort of a landmark. The roof technique is from Derfeln Cadarn's Medieval village guide.

The pub owners seems to be a solitary man, and his little room upstairs is messy but comfortable. His secret receipt is held in a safe. He's also not a man that decorates the Christmas three very brightly. The tree is based on these with some natural adaption. It's same that I used on Eurobricks Christmas raffle last month. I won on the 1st of December (handful of figs from Marvel's Helicarrier) and my tree was on their calendar page, hooray. So here's a little tribute for that (because it saved me from building furniture to the corner, right enough).

The lorry is loosely based on old Saab lorries, but only loosely. The one-fig cockpit is more set-esque and not very true to actual vehicles, but it fit the overall feel there. I began with the fender and hood and most of time was spent working on them; I build everything first on black and them copied it in bleys and cool medium blue. The barrels on the platform include the products of our brewery.

I also used a handful of figs there. Some of them had been going around my minifig bins or tables for a while, but most were built for this creation. I wanted to achieve 50s or 60s British village feel familiar from numerous popular TV series. In Finland, at least.

-Eero