MISQUAH — For the first time since the Co-op closed in 1987, something is warm inside the old creamery on Second Avenue. Annika and Jonas Holt fired their kettle Wednesday for the brewery’s first test batch, and by mid-morning the smell — sweet, malty, unmistakably like bread — had drifted the length of the block and brought three separate neighbors to the door to ask what it was.

“It’s supposed to smell like that,” Jonas told each of them, and each of them, by his account, said the same thing back: that the building used to smell like something too, once, and it was about time it did again.

The test batch is exactly that — a shakedown of the tanks, the lines, and the plumbing, not a beer anyone will drink except the Holts, their equipment vendor, and, by longstanding small-town physics, whoever happens to be standing nearby when a glass is poured. Two more test rounds are planned before anything is brewed in earnest. The August opening remains the target, and remains, the Holts stress, a target and not a printed promise, having learned what this town does with printed promises.

The week’s other development stands out front, and the town has noticed. A sign went up Friday over the door — professionally made, properly permitted, and entirely covered in canvas. The Holts confirm it bears the brewery’s name. They confirm the name is decided. They confirm nothing else. “We’ll take the canvas off when we open the doors,” Annika said. “The name and the beer arrive together or not at all.”

The canvas has already become a minor civic attraction. Foot traffic on that block of Second Avenue is reported to be up, entirely among people walking slowly past the sign as though not looking at it. At least one attempt to peek — by a party this newspaper could identify but won’t — was foiled by the discovery that the canvas is tied from the inside. The town’s working theories remain the Creamery, the Old Co-op, and the Cultured Cow, the last of which the Holts have now heard often enough that Jonas will say only, “It’s a good name,” in a tone this newspaper found impossible to score.

The building, meanwhile, goes on filling in: glassware arrived Thursday, the bar got its final coat, and the tile — cleaned, not replaced — shines the way it must have in 1951, when a crowd gathered to watch a tank come through those same doors. A crowd is expected again. This one will be allowed to stay for a beer.