Day 8: "Home Alone 4"

Thank you for asking, yes that is a Moose in my back yard!!! Yes, you are so observant, it also has a baby!!! I have been hearing Steve and Vicky (the owners of the brewery and the condo I'm living in) tell me that "the moose are everywhere, just look outside" for two weeks. Today Vicky showed up for 5 minutes and voila... A MOOSE. She is either really good at spotting meese or really lucky. Congrats to me for finally getting to see some wildlife!



One of the questions that has popped up in the comment section of this blog is "how do you actually clean kegs?"

Here is my response, and this answer not only goes for cleaning kegs, but also for cleaning bright tanks (the tanks before beer packaging), as well as any other re-usable beer containers.

1) Rinse
2) Rinse
3) Wash
4) Rinse
5) Rinse
6) Sanitize

The actual keg cleaning machine we have at Lone Peak is shown below. Luckily it has three heads instead of just one, I'm guessing that if I could only clean one keg at once the whole process would take three times as long (good thing I knew calculus so I could calculate that). What happens is I line up three kegs, scrub them on the outside and then "tap" them and flip them upside down onto the machine. You can see the tap heads going into each keg has two tubes, an inlet and an outlet. Using some valves and a sweet cadence I have memorized I can clean about 15-18 kegs and hour! Notice the comfy upside down keg in the corner next to the CO2 tank, this is where I sit during the whole process... wow is right!




So why is this post titled Home Alone 4?
Today was the first time that Steve left me alone while I had some responsibilities. He left in the middle of the IPA transfer from the fermenter to the bright tank, and I oversaw it!
Under supervision I cleaned and prepped the bright tank for beer, and finished kegging the Hopfest '09! I am a dynamo!

Tomorrow is going to be a long day:
1) Brew the Outlaw Amber
2) Keg the IPA (I'm in charge of this)
3) Clean the bright tank
4) Clean a fermenter
5) Prep the order for the distributor

Again, this weekend I will be making a glossary of beer terms for all of you. So far I need to explain: growler, pig, and bright tank. Any more requests?

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!