Friday, April 21, 2006

Ass Sprain

More on that title later.

Well, the last two brew days at the brewery have been more for training me to do it. Slowly I'm getting to do the entire brewing process. Soon enough... I will be a real brewer :). Today we did one of our beers (Aprikat) which has a high wheat content. Beers high in wheat (which is high in protein) are harder to mash with since the wheat "gums up" the mash bed, causing water not to flow through it and thus ... well, bad. Today, my mash stuck. Almost twice. But I learned the lesson the first time and know what to do in the future. A stuck mash will happen to every brewer eventually, I got mine out of the way early. So... horray! I'm almost a real brewer!


As for ass sprains...
Now, I do a lot of work in the brewery that involves lifting, bending, and other actions bad for the back. I pulled a muscle that seems to be at the top part of my left ass cheek. What was I doing when I did this today? I was bending down to pick up a dish from the dishwasher. Guh.
It hurt all day, but its not like I can do much about it. I'll just load up in ibuprophen before bed (now) and hope it feels better tomorrow....

cheers

2 comments:

Ben, aka BadBen said...

Probably a dumb question: Does your brewery use rice hulls to keep from having stuck mashes with wheat/rye? I use them at home, and it makes a huge difference. Rice hulls are real cheap (in bulk), also.

Sorry about the injury. It might be more appropriate to treat it with asspirin, though.

bwestcott said...

We don't use any filter bed aids like rice hulls, (apparently) our mash system is setup to work well even with high wheat content beers. The head brewer never gets stuck mashes with it, so I just need to learn how to control the system so it doesn't stick I think.