Thursday, March 02, 2006

Cellarman

Well, this being the third day of my new job at a small craft brewery, I probably will stop with the day-by-day updates as to what I'm doing. Other than the following, of course.

Well, today started out by being shown the process of filtering a beer. This ain't no easy process, from what I could gather, and I could not do it on my own right now. Lets just say there are lots of valves, filters, mixing tanks, and so on. Seems like quite the process, and I'm sure I'll have to do it a lot.
Other than that I was taught a little more about the cellaring process, how to take readings, how to change the fermentation temperatures, and how to do some simple labwork to check pH, gravity, and plate count organisms. I've had experience will all of those before, so no biggie.
We also did a ~20 L test batch of a new beer for summer. But I'm not going to tell you about that yet.
I made my first somewhat significant error though... I added an ingredient 5 minutes after another ingredient rather 5 minutes before. Slight miscommunication that changes things a little bit.

Nerding
I did manage to play Dungeons & Dragons for the first time in like 8 years this evening. It was pretty fun. I'm a halfling rogue. I almost died, but I managed to kill 2 hobgoblins. Sweet.

Anyway....
...
Cheers!

2 comments:

Ben, aka BadBen said...

Brian,
You're already wearing a lot of hats at your new job. Working at a small brewery will give you the skills and background to open your own operation, someday.

Cheers!
Bad Ben

bwestcott said...

Thanks!
Thats really why I wanted to work at the smallest brewery possible... learn everything! If I was at a big brewery I would be cleaning hoses all day or something. :)