A Brewer's Journey...

NEW BLOG!!!

2010-02-08T17:26:00.001-08:00

to continue to follow my story go to:

http://beertwinkie.wordpress.com

Day 100: A New Journey

2009-11-09T17:54:00.000-08:00

Sorry that it has been so long since my last post. Big changes have taken place in my life, but I am almost caught up with the whirlwind!

I have accepted a brewing job back in good ol' Minnesota and will be moving home this friday! I have plans to revamp my blog, change the direction a little bit, and move it to a new host (wordpress).

For those of you that have followed my journey so far, thank you! It will continue once all the dust settles and I start my new job on November 30th. Stay tuned!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal to my future!

Day 88: Candace Update

2009-10-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

I've had a few requests for updates on Candace, the canning machine. Unfortunately there isn't much of a story to tell right now. A few small mechanical changes are going to be made to increase reliability and right now Steve and I are waiting for the parts. We should be receiving the parts this week and then work to get her running ASAP. Not to give too much info about our timeline (we gotta keep you all guessing!) but we are thinking new years would be a good time to celebrate sending a few pallets of cans to the distributor for the first time!

On a lighter note, we are doing a Maine Lobster Feast at the brewery on Wednesday and Thursday this week! So far we have received 105 live lobsters and are still getting 35 more tonight! We have our pilot "brew tree" system in the brewery, all gooed up because we have been cooking all the lobster back there; quite a nice smell too! See below the collection of ~70 gimpy lobsters that we used to make the lobster ceviche, lobster bisque, lobster rissoto, lobster ceaser salad, and lobster smothered puff pastry. I had the pleasure of tearing the claws and tails off of all of these lobster, and then pulling the meat out of every single claw and tail! (okay, Vicky helped too) I have to go enjoy this dinner tonight and I am already sick of these little guys!!!

Either way, it was a great time for our guests last night and we are looking forward to tonight. If any of you make it out to Big Sky in the winter time we are going to be doing more of these 5-course dinners! Don't forget the meal finishes with a steamed 1.5-2 lb. lobster of your own to rip apart and eat!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 87: I'm Good at Stuff!

2009-10-12T17:42:00.001-07:00

Today was THE DAY that I removed our old glycol storage tank from the basement. You may remember my previous post about removing the old glycol chiller, this was the second step to that process. The cool thing about what I accomplished today was that I did this all on my own. Without any help from Steve (until the very last part) I managed to get the 1000+ pound tank onto a pallet, moved over to the elevator, raised up high enough to fit over the elevator railings, and moved it upstairs... by the way, the tank is 54" wide, the elevator opening is 54.5" Check out the pictures!!!

Steve helped me unload the tank from the elevator and move it into our storage space next door. After this project, which took me nearly all afternoon, I was exhausted! I sat down, had a few bites of quesadilla, and drank an nitro IPA. I'm very proud that I was able to engineer the removal of this tank without breaking anything or hurting anyone!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 85: MY FIRST BREW!!!!

2009-10-08T08:21:00.000-07:00

YESTERDAY I BREWED MY FIRST BATCH AS A PROFESSIONAL BREWER! It is not the most exciting news though because it was only a 10 gallon batch, and I didn't have to do any of the work to get the wort... but I am proud nonetheless! Here is the story:

It was a dark and stormy Tuesday. I showed up to work a little late, I'm afraid to admit; so I snuck in quietly, hung my coat on the rack, and began working diligently. Suddenly, Uncle scrooge storms up behind me, I knew I was going to get it for being late (and I put an extra piece of coal on the fire to warm up our icy brewery), boy was he going to be mad! He says, in a calm yet upbeat voice, "Check out this article about the new beer laws in Montana." I was taken aback. No mention of my tardiness (of course he didn't mention the coal, that was a joke, if you hadn't caught on yet).

After reading the article, I learned about a certain liquor store proprietor who is celebrating Montana's new law, allowing beer above 8% alcohol by volume (abv) to be produced and sold. He is celebrating by visiting each of our 23 or so breweries in the next few months to try the strong beers that we are now going to make. I mentioned this to Steve, implying that we don't have a strong beer to serve this guy. Then the wildest thing I have ever heard came out of his mouth. "How much grain fits in our mash tun? Lets make an Imperial IPA." WHAT!?!?! I exclaimed. You see, Steve isn't actually like Uncle Scrooge very much, but he does keep a very watchful eye on his resources. This is the main reason that Lone Peak has been as successful as it has, and will continue to be in the future. There are sooo many ways to waste money in the brewing world, one of the only ways to run a lasting and successful brewery is to be very tight about what you choose to buy and don't buy. In this situation, I never thought that throwing an ass ton of grain and nearly 3 pounds of hops per barrel would ever cross Steve's mind. But, here is a lesson that I taught him with our Bourbon Barrel Aged Oatmeal Stout: people will pay more for big and extreme beers! Using that justification he is now all about there beers!

So, yesterday, we brewed the Fatal Exposure Imperial IPA! To answer Steve's previous question, 850 pounds is how much grain fits in our mash tun. Check out the picture below. We are about two inches below the sparge (spray) balls!!!

Here is the "hop mountain" on the inside of our kettleafter transferring the Imperial IPA into the fermenter. Notice the small moat of wort around the mountain of hops. We added nearly 21 pounds this time!

That is one full mash tun! In order to get the gravity of our beer up to where we wanted to, we decided to only brew a 7 bbl batch, which also saved us money on our hops! Let me stop here and say that my day was already very very exciting. On top of this Imp IPA, I hooked up a nitrogen tank to a sixel of Lone Peak IPA so we could start experimenting with nitro beers! I'm super stoked about this (more later). But my day got more exciting! As we were lautering, we realized that the gravity of the wort coming from the mash tun was about a 1.050, and we were almost done filling the kettle to our 7 bbl mark! Thinking on my toes, I quickly ran to the basement, grabbed our pilot system, and began lautering into two 7.5 gallon pots. I was going to make my own beer!

Here is the begging of the lauter into the first pot. Because the pots were so heavy, I pushed them on a dolly over to my brewery... check out the following picture of the first pot beginning to boil and the second waiting to be hoisted into place.

Now wait a minute... what kind of beer was I going to brew? I suddenly feel like the homebrewers who are getting (or have already gotten) wort from Surly, except I have less than 30 minutes to decide on a style, brew it, while completing the rest of my brewery responsibilities! After pondering, I decided to brew a beer that I have dreamed about for a long time: an all-hop IPA. As a homebrewer, it would be difficult to make a beer like this because I would have to buy so many damn hops! Here is what the beer contains: E.K. Golding, Willamette, U.S. Challenger, Galena, Styrian Golding, Palisade, Ahtanum, Chinook, Centennial, and Columbus. I would have added a few more varieties, but we are still waiting for a few hop contracts to show up this year!

Below is a picture of our sweet cooling apparatus. Luckily Steve has two copper cooling coils lieing around (who the fuck has two!?!).

And here is my favorite picture of the day. Before I post it, here is a question: when you work in a brewery, how do you get yeast for a pilot batch of beer? Steve had an ingenious solution! Sanitize a ziplock bag, then fill it with yeast from the bottom of a tank! Then just throw it in the sanitizer bucket again until you need to pitch it.

What a silly method. I never saw that coming!

And what about these nitro beers that I mentioned earlier? Check out the new 3-tap tower that I installed today! The middle tap is a nitro tap! Our plan is to constantly rotate our nitro beers as Steve and I please. Today I got to try my very first nitro IPA after installing the tower... OMG! It was better than... well you know.

Fun times at Lone Peak Brewery this week!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 81: Brewing is fun (even on Sunday's)

2009-10-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

So I had to go into work on Sunday (boooo). It wasn't too bad though! The reason that I was summoned to help brew a batch of Headplant Pale Ale on a Sunday was because last week I took a few days off and drove home to MN. Thanks to my Twin, Derek (http://beerthis.blogspot.com), Mike, and Randall for showing up at Stub and Herb's to drink a few beers with me and have some fun! I know you guys enjoyed the Hopfest '09 Brown Ale.

Let's quickly jump back to Friday. After posting in the morning, I showed up at work at 9AM!!! (I love those days) and wasn't sure what we were going to do. Steve and I decided the best course of action was to continue the "get the old ass glycol chiller out of the basement" project, so we drove to the Madison River Brewing Co. in Belgrade for some free 55 gallon chemical drums (needed to store our glycol in from now on). Being a brewer and going to other breweries is AWESOME! We spent a good hour walking around the brewery with the owner, Howard, learning about their processes, how their business is doing, what is up and coming, etc. Then we hung out in the tap room for another hour and sampled some beers, talked more brewery stuff, and even walked out of there with a free growler! I also got to spend some time with the brewers while Steve and Howard were talking big boy stuff. They were brewing a batch of the Hefe on their 30 bbl brewhouse which had a mash mixer, lauter tun, kettle, HL tank, and whirlpool!!! (I was jealous).

After we returned, with our 6 drums, we figured out that we had to wash them. Luckily these drums came from a local dairy and previously held cleaner for the equipment. Because brewery and dairy cleaners are very similar... we didn't have a problem cleaning out the drums. The invention we came up with to clean the drums was a cannibalized CIP arm and spray ball, pointed at the sky, and we set the drums on top!

Here is the set up before a drum was on top....

And here is the invention with a barrel top!!! That was most of the excitement for friday. I spent the afternoon draining the glycol from our old tank into the drums, and then cleaning up my mess. I left work after milling in for the Headplant Pale Ale.

It has been snowing a TON in our region over the past weeks. Here is a shot of the mountain that I took on my way to work on Monday morning. Oh man I cannot wait for the ski season!!!

Here is Steve and Vicky's youngest daughter Sadie enjoying a warm cup of Buck Snort Porter wort as we were brewing it on Friday. Adorable.

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 80: What is my job title?

2009-10-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

This week I have worn many hats. So far, I have been a painter, an excellent boyfriend (from Kelly), a mover, a one man clean-up crew, and an equipment remover guy. I will probably be a chemical handling specialist today... along with probably a chicken tender muncher (its chicken tender friday!!!)

Monday I was mainly a painter. We are finishing up a storage room in the back of the brewery building that will act as the new cold/dry storage area for the restaurant's food. This is one of the many steps in the process of converting our "brewpub" into a "brewery" and "restaurant/bar". By splitting the business we can take advantage of longer day to day operating hours, removal of the 3 pint daily beer limit, and now we can serve wine and some spirits if we desire!

Tuesday and Wednesday I spent most of my time re-organizing stuff around the brewery, cleaning up small messes, and also taking on two bigger projects. The first was to remove the old glycol chiller from the basement. Glycol is the working fluid that is used to cool the brewery's fermenters and brite tanks. Down in the basement we had a system that involved a 300+ gallon overflow tank and a small chiller unit which cooled and circulated the glycol upstairs. Apparently it was an unreliable (piece of shit) and a new one had to be purchased. The old system is still downstairs, taking up space, and filled with glycol. I took on the challenge of removing the stupid chiller unit... with no previous experience doing anything like this!

Obviously, I was successful! Here is the unit on a pallet, upstairs, waiting for its final resting place. Ideas that Steve and I have had so far: dragging it behind a truck, driving on a trailer to Bozeman (not tied down... whoops did it fall off?), using it as part of our dummy for the 2010 Big Sky Dummy Jump (go youtube 2009 big sky dummy jump), and of course burning the damn thing! I feel like it actually is going to end up at the recycling plant, but hey we can dream right?

Look at all the space that is opened up in the basement!!!! The other project I took on was removing the wood/metal waste that had accumlated on the side of the brewery. After a couple years of broken pallets, small construction projects, a few new tanks, and some other random events, we had accumulated a very nice pile of scrap metal and wood. Because of the looming weather, we knew that this had to be dealt with now or it would remain until the spring thaw. It only took me two trips! One was to a local who has a giant trailer that is destined for the dump, the other trip was to the Bozeman recycling plant. Check this out!

Yes! That is a giant magnet dragging scrap steel out of the back of my truck (in a gianter mud puddle!) One of the coolest things me and Ron (my truck) have done together so far. Also notice that she is topless... only for a little while, I took her back to the brewery and put her top back on.

Wednesday morning, Kelly and I awoke to this view out of our condo... notice the unusual occurance of snow in SEPTEMBER! It kept going all day and to our surprise (not really) this is what it looked like on thursday....

Fucking wow! It is still like that today (friday morning), but we are anticipating it will be melting soon. I gotta run, I don't want to be late to work! Thanks for reading!!!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 72: Hop Harvest Heard Round the World!

2009-09-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

Let's play some catch up!

Saturday the 19th, Steve and I brewed our very first fresh hop ale! The idea formed a couple weeks back when we received word that MSU Bozeman started growing a few select hop varieties this year in a test plot. They were looking for homebrewers/breweries to come and harvest the hops on Saturday the 19th. After a little prodding and some day dreaming about a fresh hop brew, Steve finally gave in to my prodding and we decided to go ahead with the idea. We had quite a few ideas for the style of beer but eventually agreed that a fresh hop pale ale would be the best platform to showcase the green/wet hoppy character. Unsure of the amount of hops we were going to recieve, we decided to only brew a 1/2 batch (5 bbl).

I spent most of the days leading up to this brew day brimming with excitement! This is the first batch of beer that I have been able to collaborate with Steve on! Finally Saturday arrived!

I drove to the hop field with Kelly sitting shotgun and left Steve at the brewery to mash in. Once we arrived it only took about 45 minuts to fill the back of my truck with hop bines (not a typo, they are bines not vines). The most efficient way for us to deal with the trimming of the hops was to take whole bines back to the brewery and to have an army of volunteers/beer lovers chop them up for us. Below are a few images of the harvest taken by Kel.

Here I taking down a bine of fuggles. As you can see in the picture, some of them look much bigger and more fruitful than others! (We made sure to take the really awesome looking ones!) We ended up with mostly cascades, a few bines of fuggles, and a few of a native north american variety that I don't recall the name on.

The back of my truck... with as many hops as we could fit!

Our kettle + 24.5 lbs. of hops! They look like little green cockroaches!

The "Lone Peak Fresh Hop Pale Ale" (I know boring name) is still fermenting right now. I tried it yesterday. The aroma is sweet and slightly grassy, the flavor was still yeasty from the fermentation but a toasty malt character definatley comes through, and the finish is a light but apparant hop character that can be described best as fresh! (Score that was our goal).

P.S. Just to show all of you how we have fun in Montana... this is my buddy Alex biking over a bonfire at the bar last night!

P.P.S. Tomorrow the forecast is 38 degrees and snowing all day! Ski season here we come!

Day 64: How my job has changed...

2009-09-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

Last year, in a lunch meeting with the owner of a very prestigious St. Paul based brewing company, I remember asking "How has your job changed since you started Summit Brewing Co.?" Often before I had these lunch meetings I would sit down and generate lists of questions. This was one of the questions that I had come up with for that meeting and to be honest I wish I would have thought of it years ago...

My dream is to someday start a brewpub (and craft distillery cough cough). Of course, I have bigger aspirations than just any brewpub though. I am hoping that this brewpub turns into a pilot/test/fun facility and I end up with a much larger production facility to produce beer that sells all over the country. Many have already accomplished this in their own lives. When I asked Mr. Stutrud about how his job has changed over the 20 years that he has run Summit Brewing Co., I was asking how MY future may change when I accomplish the same someday. Too bad. Instead of discussing my awesome question, I ended up learning about the 3 tiered system and how it hurts craft breweries
(which is still very important, but not exactly what I wanted)

Luckily for all of you I will ask myself the same question (and answer it) Spencer, how has your job changed over the 60 days you have worked at Lone Peak Brewing Company?

The greatest change from Day 1 to Day 60 (that is when I started writing this post) is my independence...

I began as a "camera". This stage lasted a few weeks and consisted of me following Steve around and watching/mimicking what he did. It took me a few weeks to buy that black notebook of mine (adding the record function to the camera); I would recommend buying one and keeping it with you during this stage of learning. It will speed the retention of what is observed greatly.

I next transformed from an observer into a "robot". Instead of watching and learning from what Steve did, I was instructed by him to do things. These tasks ranged from clamping hoses and setting up tanks (in the correct configuration) to starting cleaning cycles (in the correct order of events). After a short time of performing small ordered tasks, I became an upgraded robot (v2.0). I was instructed to "set up a tank for sanitizing" or to "mill in for the IPA." These tasks involved a series of the smaller tasks that I had previously learned how to perform and complete in the correct order.

The next stage was "Artificial Intelligence". Suddenly, I was predicting what Steve was going to do. On my own I began to do things like dig the mash tun (uninstructed) after he was done brewing. Then I would go mill in for the 2nd batch of IPA. He would tell me that he needed to harvest yeast from FV4 and while he wasn't looking I would set the whole thing up for him! I believe that it was this stage that I really started to develop into a valuable employee. Steve was then free to spend more time completing his responsibilities and less time monitoring me. An important note here: as I developed into a self-sufficient being, I learned that completing the job CORRECTLY is just as important as completing it. If I made a mistake I knew that I had to correct it myself, and do it right away. Otherwise, Steve would have to repeat what I did, wasting my time and his.

What the fuck comes after Artificial Intelligence in robot development? I knew I couldn't keep this analogy up... Somewhere between the last stage and today I have become capable of managing myself and my time to be productive without Steve's direction. Although we often still collaborate on what needs to be done around the brewery, I am very aware of what needs to get done to keep the brewery running. Once I receive the green light to transfer a brew, I can complete the transfer, clean the tank the beer came from, carbonate it, keg it, put away the kegs, clean the brite tank, and record the necessary paperwork. I am capable of preparing distributor orders, getting kegs out the door and receiving them from customers, changing kegs, fixing kegs, and fixing our draught equipment. Almost every task in the brewery other than brewing the beer and doing the paperwork I can complete now.

What is going to happen in the near future? Well, I have been dedicating all of my free time to getting Candice working. I anticipate that because of the amount of time I have dedicated to the machine, and the familiarity I have with it (and my silly engineering background) that I will be in charge of running it, maintaining it, and troubleshooting it soon!

It has been a long journey! I am looking forward to what I learn in the future and will keep this story going someday...

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 59: From Russia with Beer...

2009-09-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

I named today's post after the mostest boringest James Bond movie ever made. Today was pretty boring! The off-season is beginning to hit pretty hard and as a result the main priority influencing our brew schedule is "we need to keep the yeasties alive!" instead of "oh crap we are going to run out of that beer!" Today was the first day we have brewed since late august (I believe). I still am keeping myself busy with beer transfers and kegging, but we are almost out of beer to transfer now!

Candice the canning line is what will be keeping me busy starting tomorrow. We had a small computer chip malfunction and had to order a few more... thanks to labor day our "two day shipping" turned into "almost a week." Tomorrow should be the day that I get to start canning water though!!! I'm very excited. Although Candice and I didn't get along very well at first meeting, now I know her better than ever and we are developing into a great team.

Although the day was pretty slow, the end of the day was filled with horror, suspense, and a little drama... It was about 5:07 in the PM, I had just gotten done milling in for the IPA we are going to brew tomorrow. I walked up stairs, wondering to myself "what can I do for the next 50 minutes before I can get out of here?" That was quickly answered for me! Steve was about to clean out our transfer line/heat exchanger that we use to get beer from the kettle to the fermenters. After we had finished our brew we had chased the line out with hot water and then cold water like we always do. When he started the pump on the CIP cart to circulate hot cleaner through the lines, nothing happened! This was puzzling to us...

Could the heat exchanger be frozen? No, the glycol was turned off hours ago.

Could it be clogged with crap? No, we didn't send any crap to it.

Could there be a vapor lock? Nope, not with 500 some odd channels for liquid to move through.

We kept turning on the pump for short bursts only seeing a small amount of liquid trickle through the line back into the CIP cart. More questions and tinkering went on for a good hour. Eventually Steve just told me to go home, he would keep playing with it for a short while and then head home and we would deal with it in the morning. Lots of swear words had been said by now. What if our heat exchanger was somehow clogged?!?!? We would have to rip it apart and send it back to the manufacturer to be reassembled! What if we have to buy a new one? That could cost $5000 easily... I chose to take the easy route and just get the hell outta there. Right as I was leaving though, Steve stopped me and with a stupid smile on his face said "so I got it working" "What did you do?" I asked. "You don't want to know," was his reply.

It turns out that when he put together the filter housing that we use to catch shit running through the lines, he didn't put the metal basket in the bottom. What was happening was the filter bag was clogging our outlet, essentially slowing down the entire wash loop. WOW! One wasted hour and a few extra points on our blood pressure because of a stupid filter bag. I love my job!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 58: The ____ Brewing Company

2009-09-01T13:27:00.000-07:00

Most days at the brewery , I have some monotonous, tedious, slow paced and or boring job to complete. Today, I spent about 3 hours washing kegs, which is about as "bad" as it gets. Now this isn't a bad job by any means, I am just implying that of all the jobs at the brewery, keg washing can pretty much be done well while you are half asleep. Other jobs like this are milling in, cleaning pigs, scrubbing tanks, and blowing off yeast. Usually while I do these jobs I tend to day dream, most often about my future and the brewery that I want to start someday.

Lately, I have began to feel intimidated and left out in these day dreams. (That is sad considering they are my dreams!) The main reason behind this is that craft beer is exploding! Our industry is growing in a sinking economy. New and exciting beer styles are introduced every week. Breweries and brewpubs are opening left and right. Awards and honors are being given to the newest, greatest, and most contributing members to our movement. Renewable and alternative energies are being harnessed to create techniques and systems that are better for the environment.... All this is going on, and I am at Lone Peak Brewery, up in the mountains, washing kegs.

I have come to realize that for every brewery that is exciting and cutting edge and creating the next best and most sought after beers, there are probably 10 breweries who are just chugging along making good beer quietly in their corner of the world. For those 10 breweries there are probably 20 more that aren't even making good beer, that are in turmoil, that are closing their doors. What if my brewery is the latter? What if I don't even get there?

Sorry for the lack of confidence in this post, but if I were to say that I was 100% confident all the time I would be lieing (I am human). What I plan to do to ensure a successful future is to do what I have done my entire life when seeking personal growth and opportunity. I learn as much as I can, I dedicate myself to doing the best that I can, and I surround myself with the people that I one day want to be like. Currently I am dedicating myself to doing the best that I can. I guess I am learning as much as I can (I would like to be reading more, but working 10 hour days seems to be covering me for now). Somehow I still have to surround myself with the people that I one day want to be like.

If I had my dream... oh wait I have that right now... okay if I could continue my dream, I want to go work for one of the great's in the near future. Stone, DFH, FFF's, Avery, New Glarus, Southern Tier, Goose Island... the list goes on. I want to work for a brewery that makes beer that people are willing to trade across the country and the world for, that people are willing to drive across the state for, that people are willing to brag about. Only by becoming apart of the team at one of these breweries can I begin to understand how to foster such a creative and positive environment for myself and my brewery someday.

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal to all the greats out there!

Day 53: I AM A HOMEBREWER!!!

2009-08-31T20:09:00.001-07:00

I have been planning this post for a LONG TIME!!! While I was at home last weekend, my dad reminded me about my homebrewing roots and requested that I pay homage to my experiences back home in my parent's garage... Those were the days!

I first started homebrewing just after I turned 21 years old. My twin brother Colin had recieved a stove-top homebrewing kit from my parents and I for his birthday and had just finished his first brew (I believe it was an imitation of Bell's Two Hearted Ale). Colin was immediately hooked! The beer turned out delicious, but I think at the time I was still learning to like IPA's so I may not have enjoyed it to its full potential, just a sidenote. The next batch, I jumped in on and became hooked! At this point it was readily obvious to both Colin and I that the stove-top thing just wasn't going to work for our hands-on, tinkering/engineering, bigger is always better mentalities. We started development on our all grain system...

Colin and I have both been incredibly busy since we brewed our first all-grain batch in the winter of 2007. Colleges, careers, and social lives always seemed to get in the way of homebrewing. Despite the obstacles, we tried as hard as we could to fit in brewing here and there back home at Mom and Dad's house. During these years I started to realize (again) that what I was doing was too small for my aspirations and I wanted to start a career in the mighty and wonderful world of craft beer. If I can't make time in my career to make beer, why not make my career beer?

Here are some of the pictures from my homebrewing days:

Our very first batch on the brand new all grain system!!! I believe this is the "Buffalo Spit" Nut Brown Ale (way better than moose drool!) Sidenote: We got those A-B kegs for $12 a pop at a liquor store... now I know it was illegal... but they sold them to us!!!
Look at how unsafe the sparge was!!!

Brewing in the middle of winter!!!! Go Weizenbock!!!

Kitties love beer!!!

Wow are sparging technique got so much better! Here is the last homebrew batch I did before I started my job at Lone Peak (notice the first use of the cover-alls). We are brewing an imperial oatmeal stout aged with scotch and oak chips named Magnificent Demise (M.D.)

Now this post wouldn't be complete with a little advice for all you homebrewers out there (who also apsire to become brewer's someday).

HOMEBREW WITH GOALS!!!

Someday you are going to have to have recipes of your own, you might as well start working on them now! Try familiarizing yourself with as many styles of beer that you can. Once you find a recipe you like, make it again but try to make changes that improve it. Hone in and have at least 3 good beers in your arsenal before going anywhere near your own brewery.

Get to know your ingredients!!! You have the time and resources to experiment now. Use them to develop multiple IPA's, use the same malt bill but change the hops and compare them. Other ideas, try using different yeast strains for the same beer to learn about what flavors they create.

Go extreme! Great extreme beers don't (usually) turn out the first or even second time you brew them. Brew to the extreme while you are making small batches. Man it would suck to have to dump a 10 bbl batch because there is too much oak flavor.

Try new techniques and practice practice practice!!!

One more point... stop using soap or detergents when cleaning your equipment. That stuff leaves residue and messes up the flavors of your beer. Try getting ahold of PBW (pro brewer's wash) we use it around the brewery and man it works well.

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!!!

Day 50!!!! (and 51): Those Crazy Montana Weekends...

2009-08-31T19:49:00.000-07:00

Kelly and I decided to tap into our wild side last weekend. It all started on Thursday... Kelly was complaining and whining and pissing and moaning (okay it wasn't that bad) about not being able to go to the Minnesota State Fair this year. For those of you that haven't been to the MSF, you are fucking missing out! I texted her on Thursday afternoon "why don't we just go this weekend then?"

After some excited text messaging, whimsical planning, conniving with my dad, and one of the hardest and fastest paced brewery days I have worked yet, Kelly and I left for home at 3:30 pm on friday afternoon. Our plan and rules were as follows:

1) Drive straight to my parents house in Plymouth
2) Rest up and have breakfast with my parents and aunt
3) Surprise my brother at the fair, spend the day chowing and partying with him
4) Leave fair about 6 and head off to Brainard to surprise Kelly's family (Happy BDay Patti!)
5) Sleep in a little on Sunday and then drive back to MN
6) We don't tell anyone we are going, except for our families!!! We don't have enough time to deal with friends (so sorry)

mmm... August Schell's Roggenbier, Oktoberfest, and Firebrick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In brewery news, our canning machine IS ALIVE!!! (Dr. Frankenstein voice) After transferring 10 bbl of Nordic Blonde (without the help of the CIP cart, I'll explain that later) I spent some time with my new friend Candice (the canning machine). I got her all turned on, for the first time wo hoo, and played with her buttons for a good two hours. So far what I have learned is that I have no idea how to run a canning machine... lol Steve and I are excited though, our first play session taught us that she responds well to our touch, and with some sensor tweaks and a better understanding of her internal wiring we could be up and running in no time!!! (Of course, we aren't sure if either of us will EVER truly understand her internal wiring, but hey, from what I hear, all men have this problem)

OMG look! The little blue screen is lit up!!!

I'm off to catch up on sleep! Stay Tuned! Lots of posting this week!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!!!

Day 48: I'm Beerstoned

2009-08-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

So, it's wednesday afternoon, Steve left me this morning because he had to go run some errands in Bozeman. My responsibilities for the day are the following:

1) Jump the Wit's End White Ale from 1/2 barrel kegs into four 1/6 barrel kegs
2) Jump the Hopfest '09 Brown Ale from 1/2 barrel kegs into one 1/6 barrel keg
3) Load up the YC delivery van with their beer order when they arrive
4) Clean BT2, FV1, and FV2

On Monday, I cleaned and sanatized BT2 in preparation for the Hellroaring ESB which we had to keg on Tuesday. After the cleaning cycle I peaked in the door to make sure everything loked clean and shiny and I discovered beer stone (da du duhhh)!!!! The quick solution for the problem was jumping in throw the small hole on the front of the tank and scrubbing the stone by hand. But, this was only temporary, and brings up a great subject for discussion.

Caustic cleaners (such as PBW which works great btw) are designed to clean and dissolve organic matter that is left behind after using the equipment. We generally use caustic washes to clean all of our tanks, soak our parts, the kettle, and the mash tun. Everyonce and a while though we have to switch up our cleaning regiment and use acid cleaners. Acid cleaners are designed to clean and dissolve inorganic deposits (water scale, rust, alkaline scale, and other minerals). From what I have read, it is common for breweries to use caustic most of the time and use acid everyonce in a while to remove scaely build-up. Each brewery will have its own cleaning regiment though designed for the optimum for their own situation.

Below is a picture of me and TJ (Steve and Vicky's 5 year old daughter). I just wanted to rub it in to all of you aspiring brewer's out there that while you are working your butts off trying to get through brewing school and get jobs in the industry, TJ is getting on the job experience for free and at a very young age! Here she is watching the sight glass on a beer transfer. She also knows how to dig the mash tun, roll empty kegs, clean the outside of empty kegs, and poke Steve and I with the broom handle when we aren't looking!!! Adorable huh?

I'm off the finish my cleaning! Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 46: The Empire Strikes Back

2009-08-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

Since my last update, life at the brewery has been slow. We spent a few weeks brewing and kegging like crazy, and now we have a cellar of beer that is overflowing and not so much work to do. Steve has had the fortune of catching up on the never ending pile of paperwork that is a side-effect of running a brewery. I tidied up the brewery, scrubbed the floors, cleaned out tons of used pigs, and of course spent some more time with my new best friend Candice (the canning machine).

Friday turned out to be the greatest day at my brewing job yet... After showing up at 8:00 in the morning and starting to do a few of my morning chores, Steve got a phone call from a friend who also happens to be a fishing guide in town. "I had a trip cancel on me today," Adam the guide says, "you wanna play hookie and go float the Yellowstone River?" Steve tells me this and of course my response is "I'm in." Within 15 minutes we had the place closed up and were on our way to spend an entire day fishing on the Yellowstone river with an awesome guide and his boat!

Was it a fun time? See for yourself!

IS THAT REGULATION SIZE OR WHAT?!?!?!

I had more fun this weekend because Kelly's sister Kristing and a mutual friend Maria were in town. We did some more river floating (less fishing, more drinking) on Saturday. On Sunday we headed off to Yellowstone National Park. The highlight of the day was eating lunch with the herd of buffalo. It is mating season right now and we saw the following illeagal offenses:

1 - Assult (two males fighting)
2 - Public displays of affection (kissing and ass licking)
3 - Domestic abuse (males pushing around females)
4 - Loitering (standing in traffic)
5 - Public Urination (and defication)
6 - Child abuse (males pushing around calfs)
7 - Indecent Exposure (see video below... yes it is a buffalo with a red rocket!)
8 - Rape (males mounting females)
9 - Noise Complaints (yelling and swearing at each other)
10 - Vandalism (charging at our car!)

Later this week, I would like to explain how to clean pigs (I have been meaning to do this for a while!) and touch more on the development of our canning machine!

Thanks for reading! Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 43: THE CANNING MACHINE (Part Deux)

2009-08-19T06:34:00.000-07:00

Today was only a 10 hour day... lots of keg cleaning and then more work on the canning machine.

I want to share another aspiring brewer story. This one I received yesterday and man I am excited for this guy (Owen). What dedication! What an idea!
Here we go:

"I wanted to briefly share with you my journey as an aspiring brewer, mostly for reasons of camaraderie because it seems like we have a lot in common - I'm a young, a recent college grad with a degree in biology and a desire to enter the brewing world despite limited 'field' experience. I just graduated from Brown University in Rhode Island this past May, where I developed my interest in brewing and craft beer. I've been homebrewing for a little over a year now and got so into beer last year that I was able to design my own class on all things beer - its history, brewing science, the brewing industry, and how to appreciate a good beer (sensory evaluation, choosing the right glass, all that frou-frou stuff that I can't get enough of) - and I got credit for all this nonsense! I was able to visit most of the brewers in the state of Rhode Island and sit in on a couple brew sessions, as well as volunteer for the Great International Beer Fest (it was an absolute shit show. Got a ride home in the back of a cop car but luckily wasn't arrested). I read as much beer literature as possible and got so psyched about beer that I made it my mission to pursue a career in the beer industry, specifically brewing.

Now, you're right that it's exceedingly difficult to find a job without any experience. I explored probrewer.com as well and nearly all the classifieds required some experience. How do you get an entry-level job if they all require experience? So, I got creative. I've always yearned to travel, especially to Europe, and I had heard of a cheap way to do so through a program called Willing Workers On Organic Farms (WWOOF). I thought, "There must be some way I could tie brewing into this..." and, sure enough, I searched the database of farms and found a handful of them that have microbreweries. (Through the WWOOF program, volunteers find farms and work for them in exchange for room and board... most of the places produce vegetables, meat, cheese, and sometimes wine, but there are several farms that produce special value-added products). So, in less than a month I'll be starting in France at a farm that grows its own hops and barley to produce Belgian-style beers (my fave) with such oddities as walnuts and truffles. I hope to find other breweries in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the UK, and Ireland. After this trip (which I hope will last up to a year) I'll be back in the states with some experience under my belt and a whole lot of enthusiasm! I'm still considering brewing school, but I'll just have to play it by ear. I've also got a blog started that will document my adventures when I leave on September 4th; if you're interested, it can be found at www.thewashedrind.blogspot.com

. Wish me luck!"

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 42: THE CANNING MACHINE!!!

2009-08-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

I again want to thank all of you readers out there! Sorry that it has been a few days since I have posted last... a few of you have done quite a good job pestering me to keep on writing! So here I am, and I have alot to share!

The most exciting bit of news was the arrival of the canning machine today(fucking finally). We have been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for this thing since I started work at Lone Peak Brewery. I think it's arrival today marked the 8th or 9th week that it was late. Nonetheless, we finally have it! Not only is this big news because it represents the future of our brewery and it will take up the rest of the capacity of our brewhouse, but it is the key to me keeping my job at Lone Peak through the winter time. Our brewery (and Big Sky, MT) has a seasonal market: the winter and summer are huge booms, and the spring and fall are pretty depressing. I have heard on multiple occasions that it just doesn't make financial sense to keep paying me through the off-season (starting in September) when there is no need for a 2nd brewer. The canning machine allows us to sell beer in liquor stores all over the state, bridging the gaps in our sales.

The most surprising bit of news was that my good friend (and hopefully future business partner) Matt Lange is starting his first brewing job! I got the call yesterday while setting up the canning machine so I am a little short on the details, but I will fill all you in with the whole story soon!

Coming up this week:
- How to clean and fill pigs
- Another awesomely awesome e-mail from one of you readers
- Our struggles with the canning machine
- The details of Matt Lange's entry into the brewing world

I gotta go to work, I'm late!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

P.S. This picture is for Clarice... YUM!

Day 40: Jump Around (Remix)

2009-08-13T08:46:00.000-07:00

By request of Kelly's cousin Marie... I have to tell Kelly the following tidbit:

"Come out of hiding!!!"

Now, onto the beerogging (is that a new word I just invented?) So, I only have about 20 minutes to write this. I'm at work right now, at the computer behind the bar. I am cleaning a brite tank in back... just for your info the hot cleaning cycle on a tank takes about 20 minutes, the whole cycle takes about an hour though!

Okay, I lied, my boss just showed up, so I left to do more cleaning stuff... now I am done with the hot cleanse and the hot rinse. I am refilling the CIP cart with cold water for the cold rinse and then I have to set the tank up for sanitizing. Once I get the sanitizing going then I will have another 10 minutes to write in this thing!!!

What I want to cover is jumping kegs. Keg jumping is moving beer from a 1/2 barrel keg to a 1/6 barrel keg. I guess that this definition could be expanded to moving beer from any size keg to any size keg, but at our brewery we only have 1/2s and sixels. When I keg beer, depending on the style, I usually fill anywhere from 3 - 15 sixels. Most of our draft accounts are for 1/2 barrel kegs, but there is a handful of bars that order our beer in 1/6 barrel kegs so that they can fit two kegs in one draft box. Some of these bars go through our beer fast! It begs the question, why don't they just get 1/2 barrel kegs instead, but they are stuck in their ways, so we give them what they want. This week we ran out of 1/6 barrel kegs of Lone Peak IPA early and needed to get 5 more.

So it was as easy as 1 half-barrel keg = 3 sixth barrel kegs right??? NO! We end up losing a small about of beer here and there during each keg jump. Instead of sending out nearly full 1/6 barrel kegs, we decide to make 1 half barrel keg into 2 sixth barrel kegs and a leftover partial half barrel keg. Usually this isn't a problem. When we have a partial keg of anything we stage it as the next keg to be used up for our taproom and it disappears within a day or two. Because we had to jump 5 sixels yesterday though we created 3 partial kegs of IPA! We also did some pig filling two days ago which follows the same reasoning (we'd rather leave partial kegs than end up shorting our piggy's). In our cold box downstairs we have 5 partial kegs of IPA!!! I don't know how long it will take us to burn through them, but the next week is going to be hectic for that beer!

Check out the picture below. This is why you always should put all your money on black when you go to Vegas. Here is me and my buddies winning $40 each on one bet! I believe that I had the green chips... pretty sexy huh?

P.S. I hate this blogger program. I can't move my pictures around right now by my usual method of copy and paste. When I copy and paste the text around the pictures it reformats all my font and takes out all the spaces between the paragraphs!!! AHHH frustrating!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 39: I am baaaaack!

2009-08-12T06:31:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the absence to all of my readers out there. I spent a few days recovering from a trip to vegas and spent a few contemplating the direction of my blog.

I feel as though the initial spark and excitement of having my first brewing job has worn off (alot). Now I am in the rhythm, learning what I can, perfecting my personal responsibilities, and starting to thirst for more. I had a nice chat with Kelly (and probably a black bear) while sitting out back in the hot tub last night and here is what I remembered/concluded.

1) I was given this advice by Terry North from J. J. Taylor Distributing at a lunch meeting at S&H while drinking a August Schell Stout: Master your craft.

2) I was given this advice from Jeremy Hunt at DFH: Never stop learning! Read whatever you can get your hands on and stay ahead of the curve!

I am planning on joining some professional brewers associations, doing some online research for reputible online beer related periodicals, my subscription to BA is coming soon!, and now I want to start homebrewing like a madman!

I'm not sure how to take on the homebrewing part. We have a great 30L pilot system at the brewery and most of the malt and hops that I could ever use. I'm not sure if I should focus my efforts on one style of beer for a while or go nuts making a variety of styles.

RIght now, I am late for work!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!!!

P.S. Thanks Colin and all the BA's back home that give me encouragement to write in this! I can't wait to see you guys on DDay Eve

Day 36: WHAT A WEEKEND!!!

2009-08-03T20:41:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a weekend! I turned 24 (happy birthday to me) and got to go to a beer festival in Gardiner, MT (the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park). This was a great beer festival because the locals close up shop early and show up to PARTY. They also all have dogs, and all brought their dogs. It was kind of a combination of beer festival with dogs running and playing everywhere. Here is a nice shot of a thirsty puppy stealing our keg ice.

Our beer festival volunteers were great this time! We ended up not having to serve much of our beer at all, and instead playing horseshoes and drinking heavily with all the other brewers in attendance. The way that Montana does beer festivals is quite screwy: Someone who wants to host a beer festival has to get a permit to distribute the alcohol. Then that person can only use their employees and volunteers to dispense the beer. So essentially us brewers end up driving all over the state, setting up our shit, and then watching someone else pour foamy cups of our beer while botching questions about what we are serving. I heard someone the other day serve our pale ale, and then say "you are going to love this WHEAT beer"... WHAT THE FUCK!

The other cool part of the beer festivals is the free food (usually). I took full advantage and ended up eating 3 hot dogs, 2 brats, and 1/2 hamburger. Of course after drinking beer all day and eating all that "healthy" food, Sunday was not fun for my stomach. Kelly and a few local friends took me rafting on the Madison River for the day. It was great but I wish that I could have had a few more beers...

My stomach has finally recovered and I'm off to work. I'll be back into the brewing routine for a few days this week, then on thursday I am leaving town. Look forward to two more posts and then I'm gone until Monday!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal

Day 34: Aspiring Brewer(s) #3

2009-07-31T06:39:00.000-07:00

Here is the final installment of my "tales of the aspiring brewers" This one came from a couple, Steph and Tim, who sound like they are truly going to go far in this industry...

Hi! I love your blog! Thought I'd respond to your request for stories about people who want to "go pro."

My husband Tim and I are both currently engineers. He's a mechanical engineer and I'm a software engineer. Neither of us like doing this *at all*. We've been homebrewers for about 3 years now, and are totally obsessed. We brew about once a week (though sometimes we do skip a week).

Our goal is to open a brewpub sometime within the next 10 years (we're only 25 right now, so we've got some time). Tim will be the head brewer, and I'll be sort of running the show for the rest of the restaurant, while continuing to brew pilot batches with Tim.

To prepare for this massive undertaking, we're of course writing a business plan, and just sort of hashing out ideas for it. We plan to go to brewing school within the next couple years, and are hoping to get some volunteer experience at a local brewery. Oh yeah, and we brew *a lot*. We're constantly working on perfecting our recipes for our future brewpub.

So, why do we want to do this? Well, we both want to own our own business for starters. But it's mostly because we just really want to brew beer every single day of our lives. It's our passion, and it's the reason we get out of bed every morning, spend 8 hours at a boring, unfulfilling job, then come home to attend to our various fermenters. We can't wait to make brewing our career!

If you're interested, I'm a blogger as well. My blog is called brew.cook.pair.joy (I'm also really into food). Take care, and keep having fun brewing!

Update: Yesterday afternoon, Tim and I received our acceptance letters to the American Brewers Guild! We'll be starting the Intensive Brewing Science & Engineering program in January 2011. We'll graduate in July 2011, after spending a week at a brewery in Sacramento gaining some practical experience! We're extremely excited to attend brewing school, can't wait until 2011!

Congrats on the acceptance to both of you!!!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 33: Aspiring Brewer #2

2009-07-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

Here is another wonderful, whimsical tale of a young man and his endeavors to enter the craft brewing world... in Philly!

My name is Andrew Riggar and I am an avid homebrewer and a passionate beer enthusiast. Currently I'm chasing my dream of becoming a professional brewer and to ultimately launch my own craft brewery. For the last two months, my dream has been sort of a wild goose chase. I just graduated college from Temple University in Philly and am unemployed- more time to homebrew! However, now that I've gotten school out of the way I can focus on what really matters to me: applying to UC-Davis Professional Brewers Certification program. Fortunately I satisfied the bulk of my prerequisite courses at Temple, but was one shy; I need to take Organic chem. So it's back to school for one class in the fall. Once I finish this course, then a major step will have been taken thus letting me finally send in my application!

I want to become a pro-brewer for too many reasons... the more the merrier, right? Said simply; I love craft beer, I love brewing it, and I love learning about it... hell, I even like the cleaning/sanitizing! Each batch of beer that I brew is a product of what I've learned, what I've thought about, and how dedicated I can be. Having such a lovable and thoroughly enjoyable hobby has been what's made me realize that it's my dream. And as you are well aware of, having a dream is a special thing. I've always known that I'm not the desk job type so discovering a dream has been very motivational for me.

What I'm up to now is a whole heck of a lot of homebrewing, reading, and preparation. The nice thing about brewing this summer is that it's in preparation for a regional contest at the end of August. I plan on having about 12-14 entries! I've been reading basically everything I can about brewing and the beer industry. I just finished Sam Calagione's book Brewing Up a Business and now I'm onto Beer School by the guys from Brooklyn Brewery. Not to mention all the articles and such on Beeradvocate.com (my user name is ajr24 fyi). Reading about other commercial ventures is just as important to me as the technical and brewing stuff.

ALSO, once I'm done writing this e-mail I'm going to a local brewpub (Rock Bottom... it's a chain) to confirm my "play date" with their brewmaster tomorrow. I'm extremely excited to see/feel hands-on the transition from homebrewing to industrial brewing. From reading your blog, I actually feel tons more comfortable with how some smaller scale brewhouses work... well your blog has desensitized me to some terminology. But tomorrow will be my very first experience. I can't wait! Tours of breweries are great, but actually getting to work in one will be all the more valuable.

The amount of integrity and the will to help others out in this industry will never cease to amaze me.

Once I graduate from UC-Davis I would love to contribute to the diverse beer scene in Philadelphia. Currently Philly is experiencing a huge revitalization of its rich beer past. Being a part of that is what I'd love to do. It's the city that made me the beer lover that I am and I'm grateful for it. I've been toying with the idea of creating a Philadelphia Hop Estate in which local brewpubs/breweries can grow/harvest hops- most likely outside of the city. Land outside Philly is pretty cheap at the moment so... I think it's doable.

Here is a quick followup to the story... The Rock Bottom brew date didn't actually work out : ( Andrew is maintaining contact with the brewmaster and working on setting up another day!

Comments? Thoughts? Questions? What are you drinking right now?

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 32: Aspiring Brewer #1

2009-07-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

The following story was sent to me last week from a good friend of mine. He is a very intelligent and driven individual, I know that he is going to go far someday. Here we go:

"I thought I'd write a little about my path towards becoming a professional brewer even though it is just beginning. When I was a sophomore in college at the University of Wisconsin, my mom thought it would be fun to give me a basic home-brewing kit for Christmas. It was essentially a fermentation bucket, a bottling bucket, a racking cane, some airlocks, and some tubing. I quickly brewed up my first batch and let it sit for a month after fermentation. When I opened it up and shared it with my roommates, I was suddenly the most popular guy around. It was fantastic. Since then, I have read every book on brewing I could get my hands on, bought more elaborate equipment, made far more complex beers, and entertained the idea of becoming a brewer as a profession.

During the time I was practicing home-brewing, I gained major respect and love for craft beer. After having some Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA it was settled, I wanted to be a professional brewer. Since I am a film major, I didn't have any real marketable brewing-related education so I decided to take an online Siebel course on brewing. It was great. I sat down, worked for hours on a resume, and sent it to about 10 Wisconsin breweries in search for a summer apprenticeship. Even after calling the breweries for a follow up, I was still getting no response, until finally I got a call from a small brewpub in the Dells who wanted me to come in for an interview for a summer assistant brewer position. The interview went well, but unfortunately I didn't get the job.

I ended up realizing my dreams of being an apprentice brewer for the summer were dashed so I enrolled in summer school to finish off my remaining 9 credits. In mid-September I start the Siebel Master Brewers course. The class starts with one and a half months of theory in Chicago then I'm shipped off to Munich to study brewing practice for another month and a half. I then have a break until June 2010 when I go back to Munich for the 6-week Advanced Applied Brewing Techniques course. During those weeks, I get to work on every step of the brewing process and I get to brew my own beer from conception of the recipe through the packaging and consuming of the product.

I can't be more excited for this coming year, and I hope that this education will help me to find a position in the craft beer industry."

Let's have a discussion! Comments? Questions?

Day 31: THIS IS BEERFEST!!!

2009-07-27T19:29:00.001-07:00

The life of a brewer is damn fun! Really really damn fun!

Should I start with the Bitterroot Beer Festival or my day today? Let's go backwards in time!!!

I'm drinking a DogFishHead World Wide Stout and writing in my blog... feeling great!
I ate some dinner with Kelly at the brewery... chili cheese waffle fries and some Hellroaring ESB
I weighed out the "all-natural" ingredients for a quadruple batch of TJ's Old Fashioned Root Beer
I ran with Steve to the compost facility to dump our week old spent grains... smelly!!! (I really hope the farmers come and pick up the next load)
I cleaned 21 half barrel kegs and 2 sixth barrel kegs... right when I finished and dumped my cleaning solution I found 5 more dirties downstairs... whoops and damnit
I ate a hot dog and some carrots for lunch
I showed up for work at 1 o'clock
I spent the morning WHITE WATER RAFTING down the Gallatin River! Such a great time! The rapids are pretty weak in most parts of the river this time of year, but that was okay because we had TJ, Steve and Vicky's 6 year old daughter with us on the river. We didn't want her falling out of the boat now! I also got to plan a trip near the end of August... here are the details: we are running a ~20 mile stretch of Beartrap Canyon, Class 4 and 5 rapids near the bottom, world class brown trout fly fishing near the top, oh yeah and we can bring beer! Who could ask for more in a day?

Now onto the Bitterroot Beer Festival! Kelly, Steve, TJ and I pulled out from Big Sky at 8:04 AM on Saturday morning. We ventured about 4 hours west and north through Missoula, MT to Hamilton, MT for the festival. On the way we stopped off at Kettle House Brewery (they make a delic Scotch Style Ale called Coldsmoke!) Tim from Kettle House showed us his new facility which is located in a restored train station. It was beautiful! I am definately jealous of parts of their setup, but from what we heard he for sure has his own set of difficulties in his process. No brewery works perfectly!

We arrived at the festival "late" or so we thought. We were asked to show up at 12:30... that would have been a huge waste of time! The festival started at 3:00 PM, we showed up at 2:30 and finished our setup in 17 minutes flat. There was somewhere around 15 breweries with over 40 beers there. We were in a tent in the middle of a blocked off street. At first the festival started out slow, but by the end of the evening I saw wristband #2000 floating around... it was packed!!!

Beer festivals are probably my favorite part of working in this industry. The main reason for this is that the people who show up at the festivals are very very open to trying beers they normally wouldn't try. Before serving our beer, people usually ask things like:

"What is your lightest beer?"
"Do you have (bud, miller, coors...)?"
"I've never had that style before, will I like it?"
"What is your best beer?"

These people obviously don't have much experience with craft beer. Usually after they try our beer, 99% of the time they say "Wow, that is so good! I never expected that!" I can witness the enlightenment of newly converted craft beer drinkers! Some of the other breweries brought silly "crowd pleasing" beers that are light and fruity and unappetizing (to me). They miss out on this opportunity! Who has fun serving beer like that? Your customer doesn't learn anything knew and you certainly miss out on the experience of helping them learn more! We brought our Lone Peak IPA and our Hopfest '09 Brown Ale, not exactly "comfortable" beers for most of the beer drinkers in the world. We flaunted the fact that we love hops, and in my opinion we were rewarded greatly for it! As the day went on we saw more and more returning customers because our beer was simply "more yummy" than all the other beer at the festival!

Here are some things that I learned while at this festival:

1) Don't drink your own brewery's beer, you drink it all the damn time, go try other beer and compliment the brewer (its free anyway!)
2) Have some swag to give away with your brewery's name on it so the drunk people can remember the delicious beer they drank
3) Bring business cards, it is networking heaven
4) If you see someone standing in front of your booth looking lost, be friendly and gesture them over, give them a beer sample, they will love you
5) If at the end of the festival your boss says "Boobs for beer" and people start lifting their shirts for pints... I didn't learn anything here except that this works!
6) BRING A TOOLBOX, things always break!

The end of the beer festival was quite a shit-show, this is becoming a trend... I get to go to another festival this weekend, if it also turns into a shitshow then my hypothesis will be confirmed and I will explain why this happens in detail.

Here is a snapshot that Kelly took during the festival, it rained on us just a little bit (don't worry the beer drinkers stayed!)

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 30: I've got a case of the fridays...

2009-07-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

Day 29: My Favorite Style of Beer!

2009-07-23T21:35:00.001-07:00

My favorite style of beer is... Bourbon Barrel Aged Oatmeal Stout!!!

This is a picture of filling the VERY FIRST KEG of Lone Peak Bourbon Barrel Aged Hippy Highway Oatmeal Stout! It was a busy and exciting day at the brewery. Any day that starts with a pint of bourbon stout has to be... am I right?

Why was I drinking a pint of this stuff in the morning you ask? Because I could? Well yes, that is part of it! The other reason is that Steve and I could not bare the thought of wasting all the yummy beer that was leftover in our filter and lines after we were done kegging. We did what any respectable brewers would do and pulled out two pint glasses and slowly captured all the "waste" beer.

The rest of the day was very hectic. While cleaning tanks, brewing Lone Peak IPA, and finishing TJ's Old Fashioned Rootbeer, we also transferred yeast, dry hopped the pale ale, and worked on carbonating a different batch of IPA. This was all before 3 o'clock, I might add. At three Steve and I headed up the mountain to install a root beer system as fast as we could, and then back down the mountain to set up a beer tent for music in the park (a weekly local music event), and clean out the mash tun, wort lines, and kettle!

I am exhausted sauce. Thanks to all of you that have e-mailed me your beer story so far. I am still looking for more! Here is a picture Kelly and I took while we were at Yellowstone last weekend (I love buffalo!)

Oh yeah, and a photo of Yellowstone Lake, the most beautiful place in the world!!!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 28: Tinker Toys

2009-07-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

What a day!!! It was 7:40 in the AM, I turned on my cell phone after its nighttime sleep, here is the text message I got: "Rafting today, bring Kelly to the brewery, see you at 8." Kelly and I have been hearing that the brewery staff was going to take a day off and go rafting down the rapids of the Gallatin River since the first day I stepped into the brewery. I would estimate that the trip has been tenatively planned at least 5 times since then. We have waited patiently, watching the river reach its peak (above 3500 cfm) and now is down to below 2000 cfm. The rapids are shallow and weak now. Nonetheless, we were excited to find out this morning that today was finally our rafting day!

NOPE!

Our group was stood up by our guide. No rafting today : ( Steve and I ended up back at the brewery at 9:15 AM to get a start on our day (of tinkering with our equipment) about an hour later than we usually would.... A new trip is planned for Monday though, cross your fingers!

Our goal today was to transfer 20 bbl of Lone Peak IPA from FV7 into the new brite tank (BT1). After quickly finishing the glycol (chilling) lines to the dimple jackets on the tank, we had to inspect the passified surface on the inside of the tank, and outfit the rest of the parts to prepare it for holding beer. Let me spare you all the gorey details, this process took about 3 hours and involved me inside the tank (sweating my ass off) scrubbing some scungy spots; fixing and rigging up a carbonating stone, fashioning a blank for a 2" opening out of a ball valve and some elbow grease, and lots of tank rinsing (and repeating of course!) Lots of tinkering!

We started transferring into the tank at about 2:00 PM. We had no idea what to expect for how long the transfer would take, and no "full" line to shoot for! The transfer took about 4 hours, it probably could have gone faster, but we didn't want to push our luck by pulling beer to fast and risking gunking up our "shit catcher." Consequently there was a lot of waiting to "see what happens." At about 6:00 PM the beer from the fermenter got so gummy with entrained yeast and dry hop residue we stopped the flow of beer. Tomorrow we will keg the IPA and find out what yield we got (I'm hoping for 39.5 kegs!). I will also have the opportunity to start cleaning FV7, my favorite! Below is a picture of the sight glass on the tank while it is filling for the very first time! Also visible is 1/2 of the tiny doorway that I had to use to climb into the brite tank while scrubbing it today.

Because we "wasted" most of our day tinkering with the tank, near the end of the day it was a scramble to finish all the of the other tasks we had planned. (I say wasted not because it actually was a waste, but just because it feels like one making such little progress all day) I got to harvest yeast from FV6 (Headplant Pale Ale) on my own! This was great for me because just last week I watched Steve harvest from another beer, and took notes in my notebook. Without any more guidance or practice I was able to do this task all on my own, just based on my notes! Here is a picture of the yeast harvest:

I also was fortunate enough to mill in the next batch of Lone Peak IPA that we are starting to brew tomorrow! This is the end of my day. Kelly showed up and we had a few beers in the taproom and now I am home, writing to you!

So far I have recieved two very insightful and interesting letters from you aspiring brewers out there! If you need some catching up, on Day 26 I asked for you, the readers of A Brewer's Journey, to write in to BeerTwinkie@gmail.com with your story about becoming a pro-brewer. I'm hoping to receive many more of these before I post my favorite of the stories in this blog. For those of you that have already e-mailed me, I am working on responding to you personally, but there are only so many hours in a day! Hopefully this weekend I will be all caught up. Thanks to all of you!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal

Day 27: My Precious... Don't lose the precious!!!

2009-07-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

Tonight Kelly and I went to the Big Sky Food Festival (Taste of Big Sky?)! We had an awesome time. Unlike the Taste of MN, which there is nothing wrong with in my opinion, this food festival was the finest eats from every restaurant in the area. It was $5 to enter, $1 a ticket and most food items were from 3 to 5 tickets. Kelly and I got to eat Salmon, Ahi Tuna, Duck, Jalapenos, Bison, Lobster, Crab, Carne Asada, Lamb, Ice Cream, Cookies... the list goes on! (All that food by the way was prepared in elegant forms, I just don't remember the details, sorry) The best part was sipping on Lone Peak Beer the entire time! Steve and I also had the fortune of setting up our tent, kegs, and taps, just like a beer festival, yippee! Here is the whole thing set up!

I have to keep this post short, it is late and we are tired!!!

What I really would like to talk about is wasting beer, spillage, the angel's share, whats gone for the homies...

It is obvious that beer is poured down the drain everyday at breweries. Some waste alot, some waste only a little. I would like to think that our brewery does a great job of saving "every last drop" that counts. For example, if we fill 6 pigs from a keg, I will take that keg home with me to pull that last 8 - 10 pints out that we wouldn't serve in the taproom (waste of time to change kegs that fast). Another example is after we go on our sales runs, we usually end up with 1/2 full growlers of a few different beers. Do we pour them down the drain? Hell no! We man up, take them home, and finish them off before they are too flat and skunked to drink the next day.

Other beer is wasted in the following ways throughout the process:

1) At the bottom of fermenters, after we transfer to the brite tank. This beer is either full of yeast or just unreachable by our racking arm.

2) During the carbonation testing from the brite tanks, we have to dump some and use some for the test.

3) At the end of the boil we have some beer left in the bottom of the kettle that isn't reached by our transfer arm. Sometimes it is entrained with trub, sometimes there isn't enough trub to displace the beer up to the arm. Here is what that looks like:

4) After transferring beer through hoses, we try and chase it out with CO2 or sanitizer... but you can't get it all!

5) My least favorite, kegs that come back partially full. The worst part about this is that usually these people bought kegs for parties or weddings... they don't bring them back for days... they used a hand pump (air) to displace the beer... it is skunk city!!! FINISH YOUR BEER!!!

6) My second least favorite, in bars from improper pouring. Often bar tenders pour the beer wrong, over-pressurize the kegs, have dirty lines, etc. which results in foamy beer that bartenders just let pour down the drain! This actually wastes a ton of beer. Clean your systems and get them tweaked right! It will save you money and make happier customers.

Today, Steve and I improved our beer conservation practices. I decided this morning that it was out of the question to waste some of our Bourbon Barrel Aged Oatmeal Stout while taking the carbonation test. As a result I showed up with a pint glass and Steve and I "caught" the beer whenever possible during the test. The photo below shows Steve even pouring the last of the beer from the Zahm & Nagel, our carbonation tester, into the pint glass to finish off a perfect pint. Yum yum, I love bourbon ages stouts at 9 in the morning!

Life is great! Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 26: I am not invincible (just yet)

2009-07-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

9:35 AM -
Still making mistakes... On thursday I jumped into the mash tun for the first time to take apart the floor, clean out below the screens, and put it all back together. When we started mashing in today, the mash mixer was running into the floor somewhere which means I messed up putting this thing back together! Right now I am really hoping it is just one screw that didn't get down correctly instead of an unseated floor... if the bottom is really messed up the whole lauter could be fucked!!!

7:43 PM -
It was only a screw!!! I'm not exactly sure how the hell I forgot to tighten down a screw, it was sticking out 1/2" which is quite noticeable imo... either way, in the future I now know to double and triple check my work. Especially the screws holding down the floor in the mash tun!!!

We had another small brewing roadbump today, our power went out right before the recirc. Our power is quite finicky, not sure why, but it goes out or browns out at least once a week. Today it was out for a good 45 minutes right at the end of the mash rest. What did I learn from this today?

1) It is alright for the mash to sit longer than planned, as long as the bed doesn't collapse if you can keep on moving within an hour or so, the only problem is a messed up daily schedule

2) Turn off and unplug all pumps and heaters as soon as possible! Brown outs are the worst because a running motor will start to slow down when the power drops but if it didn't stop then as the power comes back on the internals get "hammered" and can get easily broken.

3) If the power is out overnight, it is possible that the beer in the lines running from the cooler to the tap room got skunked.... time to clean out the lines!

4) It is not worth getting stressed out over little things that are out of your control. I understand that I don't have nearly as much at stake as Steve for example, who would lose $1500 if we have to throw a batch, but the best course of action is preparation for the worst, and damage control when the worst hits!

Today was low key other than the screw problem and the power outage. I cleaned out 36 more kegs today, I climbed in the mash tun again for my redemption, I got to try the bourbon barrel aged oatmeal stout (OMFG, SO GOOD!!!), and experimented more with our home-made rootbeer!

I had an idea today while sitting at the keg washer (this happens alot). I know that alot of you who read this blog are interested in "going pro" in the beer world. I want to know who you are, why you want to become a professional brewer, what you do now, what you are doing to prepare yourself for the job, what you are doing to get the job, what you want to do in the beer industry, etc. E-mail me with your story! Beertwinkie@gmail.com I plan to read through these responses and not only summarize what I find, but share one or two of the stories that I find most interesting or inspiring.
If you are already in the beer world I would also love to hear your story!

Thanks for reading! Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 25: I've been working in a brewery for 25 days!

2009-07-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

Today was a great day! Well, everyday is, somedays I just don't realize it. Today I was self-sufficient! Here is a schedule of my day:

6:59 AM: Wake up to my alarm on my cell phone. I had a text from the boss saying "Come in at 9, see you then!"
7:00 AM: Went back to sleep
8:15 AM: Woke up (next to my hottie gf) and got ready for work
9:03 AM: Decided to grab a breakfast sandwich on the way to work... yummy!
9:15 AM: Arrive at work, Steve says "Hi"
9:26 AM: Made fun of Steve for clogging our spray ball after trying to clean FV3... wow it is dirty!
10:45 AM: Commenced kegging the Steep N' Deep Winter Ale
11:30 AM: Finished kegging the Steep N' Deep (by myself)
11:33 AM: Steve leaves for the rest of the day!!! OMG I am on my own!
12:05 PM: Started cleaning BT2
12:56 PM: Lunch, leftovers from Kelly, YUM!
1:17 PM: Started cleaning FV3 with leftover wash from BT2
1:38 PM: Emptied CIP cart, refilled to clean FV4... OMG I'm up on a ladder 15 feet in the air and the CIP spray ball is burning my hand!!!

2:21 PM: Start cleaning FV4
3:00 PM: Is it time to start drinking yet? No
3:15 PM: It's Beer Thirty!!! I start with an ESB and finish up cleaning FV3
3:18 PM: Finished with the ESB!!! haha jk
3:18 PM: Again cleaning FV3 with leftover wash (this time from FV4)
4:05 PM: Finish cleaning FV3, time to get more beer, this time Hopfest '09, and get ready to leave!
4:45 PM: All tanks are open and sparkling on the inside! The floors are scrubbed under them! I'm ready to relax (and drink beer #3, the Headplant Pale Ale!)

5:01 PM: Walk out into the brewery and find my friends waiting for me! I sit down and relax!
5:05 PM: I realize that Kelly's Buffalo Chicken Pasta Recipe got added to the menu!!! Wow, Congrats babe!

7:15 PM: Blog writing for all you out there... how are you all doing?

I had some questings asked yesterday in the comment section about the gross yeast video:

"Do you wash that before next use?" No, this is waste yeast. Notice the environment is not exactly conducive to sterility! When we collect yeast from the bottom of a fermenter we use a sterile yeast keg (dedicated to yeast), a scale (so we know how much we collected), and a sterile hose. If we are going to be using this yeast within a day or two we don't worry about acid washing. If it is to sit around for a week or longer then we wash it and feed it.

This is before we harvest yeast:

And this is after:

"Do you have a lab where you can test the yeast for health?" No we do not, we have a simple layout and not much space. We test the yeast by the "scratch and sniff" method, i.e. smell, color, and feel. We also track how many generations the yeast has been used and what beer it was in.

I'm excited to relax this weekend! Gallatin County Fair here we come!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 24: Cleanup, Cleanup, Everybody, Everywhere...!

2009-07-16T17:19:00.000-07:00

When I first wanted to be a brewer, I had a VERY incorrect image of what the day to day job was like. I retained this image all the way up until November 2008, when I got to brew for the first time at Tyranena in Lake Mills, WI (they have a killer bourbon aged brown ale!!!). My image was related to what I did when I was homebrewing: standing around, watching my brew bubble away, while checking the temperature every now and then, and making a mess with peanuts all over my parents garage floor. What I learned at Tyranena is that professional brewing is not standing around with a clip board watching your beer bubble away. It is 90% cleaning and 10% brewing. Sucks don't it?

Surprisingly, I realized today that one of my favorite things to do in the brewery is to clean fermenters, after we are done using them. Why you ask? Shouldn't I prefer to be standing next to the brew kettle as it boils away, smelling of malt and hops? Let me tell you first hand, this smell gets less and less exciting. What is always exciting though is the dirty fermenters! They are quite challenging to get into and when you get into them... you never know what you are going to get!

To start the fermenter cleaning, there is the yeast removal. This has to be done with the tank under pressure. There is a 2 foot thick plug of semi-solid yeast trying to get through a 2" hole on its own! Doesn't work so well. See the video below for what this process looks like... gross huh?

Often we use a hose, leading to a drain and a water spray to break apart the solid yeast "poo," so it actually goes down the drain. It comes out of the hose in this form (see video), sometimes more like diarrhea, and sometimes the hose gets a little constapated. The real attention getter of this process is when we are nearly done emptying the yeast. Now think of this... above the yeast is a 20 barrel tank pressurized to 10-12 psig with a smaller and smaller amount of yeast standing in the way. Do you see a problem here? If you aren't careful that last plug of yeast turns into a high-velocity "shit cannon" that can and will spray the wall all the way across the brewery with gooey, bubbling, yeasty goodness! The way to prevent this is the sit, crouched on the ground, next to the valve on the bottom of the fermenter cone. With your hand on the valve you can feel when gas bubbles come through. When you feel a big one, shut the valve! Simple and easy... you never know when it is going to come, you can't see or hear it, you just "feel" it through a solid pipe.

Once the yeast is out, take a few minutes to relieve the tank pressure. This sounds astonishingly like you are standing next to a jet engine if you do it fast enough. Cool huh? Then the challenging part... opening the man-way for the very first time! Unscrew the handle, pop the door inside, and do you dare peak inside??? NO! Run away! Waiting inside the tank is a wall of CO2 which will rush out, burning your eyes, nose, and lungs. Wait a few minutes until the CO2 (which is heavier than air) has a chance to leave the top of the tank, then come back for a closer inspection.

Now, finally, I can peak in the tank to see the mess left behind from our last brew. I have to spray off the door, take apart the rest of the tank, spray out the openings, and again be careful when I look inside! It is still full of CO2 in there. A warning: many breweries have lost good men who climb into fermenters too soon after opening. Make sure someone is with you if you are going to climb into one!

All that is left to do now is to hook up the CIP cart and wash the tank until its shiny and spotless!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 23: Secrets, Secrets...

2009-07-15T18:41:00.000-07:00

I really really hate Blogger right now, the whole entering text and photos thing is a real challenge for this program...

Yesterday I mentioned the "brewtine" that we are trying to get into, the picture below is the schedule that we came up with! Here is a great lesson for anyone working in a brewery (or anywhere for that matter): the schedule always changes! Nothing ever stays as planned. Our new plan is to brew the ESB on friday, and delay the brewing of the IPA until later next week. It changed because we got in our distributor order this week and they want alot of ESB! We need to get more moving through the tanks to keep up!

This morning I was fortunate enough to follow Steve around while he brewed the Headplant Pale Ale. What I have figured out is that if I were to work side by side with Steve telling me what to do, I don't learn as fast as if I just stand back and write down everything he does, while asking "why did you do that?" So my trusty notebook got about 7 pages smaller while I wrote down all the details of doughing in, mashing, recircing, and the beginning of lautering. I wasn't able to stick with him to follow the entire brewing process because we had kegs to clean, as usual. Tomorrow we (he) will be brewing the 2nd half of the Headplant Pale batch and I will hopefully get to shadow the 2nd half of the brew! Then I will focus on lautering (again), the boil, the heat exchanger, and the transfer into the fermenter.

Here are some comments from my notes today on the first batch:

1) The mash tun needs a bed of 1-2" of hot water above the screens before starting to add the malt.

2) The mash mixer is running, watch inside to make sure no "dough balls" are forming on the surface. Either turn up the agitation, water, or slow the malt if this is the case. Also the trusty canoe paddle helps break these up!

3) Use the target mash temperature (157F is standard) to gauge the correct water/malt ratio. Too hot, too much water; too cold, too much malt.

4) The mash mixer paddle needs to move up as the mash level rises, controlling this to the right location will help prevent splashing and heaving of the liquid.

5) While the mash is doing its thing (mashing) for the specified time, sanitize all the beer transfer lines. Some brew houses (such as ours) don't have enough piping to sanitize and lauter at the same time, so this needs to be done now!

6) We use a "lautering can" (totally the wrong terminology) which is a converted homebrew fermenter for the lautering. We let the wort flow through the grain bed by gravity, controlled by a valve on the bottom of the mash tun, and into the lauter can (see below). Then we control a pump to pull from the bottom of the lautering can into the kettle. This way we have a consistent way to ensure we aren't pulling to hard on the grain bed (collapsing it, oh no!) during lautering.
Note: some brewer's have fancy schmancy pressure gauges across the grain bed... not us!)

7) I stopped taking notes here... darn! More on this tomorrow! Any Questions?

So what is the big secret you ask? Let me direct you to a news article that sparked this idea! We will see if you can figure it out on your own...

NEWS ARTICLE

Kelly also thought that I should mention the following. Today a few dudes came through the tap room and asked for a brewery tour. Steve showed them around for a while, and one of them started asking him about how to get a job at a brewery. Totally my specialty! While Steve gave him a short story about how I started here, I made sure the track him down and give him (my first!) business card and to give him a piece of my mind. I've discovered that I love helping people get information about this industry (and hopefully getting into it!) as much as I love making beer. This eager "dude" today reminded me why I am writing in this blog. Jared, cheers to you and the best of luck!

Also cheers to Derek and Tommy, two guys that have committed to getting their brewing educations and taking on the greatest job on earth!

Prosit and Skoal!

Day 22: Gettin' into my Brew-tine

2009-07-14T18:04:00.000-07:00

I learned a new word today "Brewtine" (instead of routine!) I was excited, stuff like that makes me feel like I'm a real "member of the club" in the beer world. If anyone asks you though, you got that shit from me, I made it up!

Today was pretty uneventful at work again today. Filling party pigs was the morning activity. I took great notes in my notebook, hopefully next time I will be able to do it on my own!

The afternoon was keg cleaning... again! I actually had a good time. It is a monotonous activity, but it is relaxing and a good de-stresser. During my keg cleaning Steve tossed me a small cardboard box and said, "Here you go, now you are finally somebody!" I GOT BUSINESS CARDS!!! I'M FINALLY SOMEBODY!!! In the future I hope to be able to represent the brewery on my own and sell some beer. That would be a good step for me to start learning the ropes of selling on my own.

Before I left, Steve and I got together and planned out our brew-edule (doesn't work for schedule like brewtine does for routine). Turns out we are brewing 2 days this week, transferring and kegging on friday, and then brewing 4 days next week! In the middle of next week we are also kegging the Bourbon Aged Oatmeal Stout! Yum Yum Yum! I wonder if I should get a growler of that and send it to the boys back home....?

Also, I got to take home my first partial keg tonight! I was planning on watching the MLB All-star game (on FOX)... check this out... we have DishNetwork with like 1,000 channels and WE DON'T GET FUCKING FOX. So Kelly and I cancelled the invite to our friends and have a fricken partial keg to drink on our own! Wow, life is a bitch.

I'd like to give a shoutout to A Maciej and Dave Matthews Band, I'm listening to DMB right now while Kelly is watching How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I can't type with TV on, its distracting. A Mac is the one who introduced me to the new DMB album, thanks!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

mmmm..... partial keg!

Day 21: My 1st Beer Festival (was last saturday)!

2009-07-13T19:18:00.000-07:00

To start, let me answer a question from my last post: When are we going to use the new brite tank?

The tank still has some passification and washing steps before we can use it. We will probably do that this week to prepare it for use next week. Currently only two of our beers (Nordic Blonde and Lone Peak IPA) are brewed and fermented in 20 bbl batches. So, as of now, only those two will be packaged from the new tank.

Saturday was my first beer festival representing our brewery! It was called the Big Sky Brewfest, organized by the Big Sky Resort. It was a small festival, only a handful of breweries were in attendance. In my opinion it was a great opportunity for us to showcase our beer for the following reasons:

1) There were less breweries to choose from so most of the guests had to leave their comfort zones to get their beer fill

2) We are located only 7 miles from the brew festival and everyone entering or leaving Big Sky has to drive by the brewery... hopefully as these guests leave town they stop by for a growler.

3) We brought our Headplant Pale Ale and our Hopfest '09 Brown Ale, two great beers to showcase what we can do!

4) The small crowd atmosphere allowed us to walk around and mingle with many of the guests (I made many friends!)

There was only one major mishap during the whole event, the Kettle house beer cooler blew a seal and started spewing foamy Coldsmoke Scotch Ale everywhere. All us brewers chipped in to help fix the problem, pulling parts from our own toolkits. It was a great reminder that while we are "competing" companies, we still have to watch out for eachother when facing the big bad world. By the end of the event, the 4 oz. pour rule turned into 16 oz. pints. Most of the younger crowd was still mingling and essentially chugging beer to kill the kegs. I was encouraging this because I knew that any partial kegs would have still belonged to the Big Sky resort and they wouldn't have done anything with them but return them to us in a week, still with beer... so DRINK UP!

Below is a shot I took during the setup of the event. Notice the nice new Lone Peak banner that I had to figure out how to hang up! Classy!

On Sunday, Steve and I decided to hit up some of the world's finest fly fishing on the Gallatin River. The salmon flies (big juicy dumb ones) are hatching and the trout are supposed to be hitting anything floating that is smaller than a squirrel water skiing. Too bad we spent more time floating around than off the boat fishing... still a great time though! Here is shot of the view we have. Reminder, this is only a few miles from my condo!!!

I believe that Steve put it best, "Trout don't live in ugly places"

Today, the actual day 21 at the brewery, was a short one (7 hours short). In the morning I cleaned out the small brite tank and pre-cleaned fermenter #4 with the left over caustic wash. It usually takes one pre-clean with semi-used caustic and one clean with new caustic to get the tanks done right. After that I helped whip up some small batch Lone Peak Rootbeer for the kiddies. It will be carbonating over the next few days and we will try it later this week!

Thanks to Toby, BA from Boise, for stopping in on friday evening. I hope you made it to the Bozeman Brewing Company after you left. I am very excited to say that he dropped off some great Deschutes and Stone brews (in exchange for some Lone Peak and a few other goodies).

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 20: The Transfer Student

2009-07-10T17:20:00.001-07:00

I believe that in the past I have routinely mentioned transferring beer without giving much more details about the process... let's fix that! (I should say that I'm getting to the point where I'm not sure if I have written on a specific topic or not in the past... sorry for any redundancy!)

Transferring beer: Moving beer from a fermenter into a brite tank in preparation for kegging. How is this accomplished? What does it look like? Well... here we go!

First off, the brite tank has to be cleaned, then sanitized, purged of air, and pressurized with CO2 before the transferring can begin! This usually takes me about 2 hours on a relatively clean tank. Really dirty tanks require more than one cleaning. After cleaning the tank (CIP), I set up all needed parts (sample ports, CO2 diffusion stone, pressure gauges, etc.) on the tank so they can all be sanitized at one time (ensuring an adequate job on all surfaces). Sanitizing is also done with the CIP cart, circulating sanitizer through the system instead of cleaner. At the end of the cycle I stop the pump and simultaneously shut some valves to trap sanitizer in my hoses (which will be used for the beer transfer later!) After this I can hook up a CO2 line to the bottom of the tank and slowly let it fill with CO2 from the bottom up. To check to make sure that the tank is purged of air I take a nice big whiff of the gas bleeding out the top of the tank, if it burns like hell, it is CO2, and I can start to pressurize.

It is worth noting here (just like tank/keg cleaning) there are rules for moving and transferring beer. Rule #1: Move beer from a pressurized container into a pressurized container! Beer, of course, has CO2 in solution, to preserve the CO2 levels, the beer has to be transferred into a place with the same or greater pressure as its environment. Hence all this talk of pressurizing tanks... back to my story.

While pressurizing the brite tank, we are sanitizing and hooking up the hoses for the transfer. On the fermenter's racking arm, which is a tube that sticks into the fermenter in the middle of the conical bottom, we hook on "The Monster." This is really just Steve's nickname for a heavy-ass thing with 3 valves and a sight glass that we use for transfers. Attached to the monster is one of the hoses (already packed full of sanitizer), which runs through the pump face and "filter" on the CIP cart and then another hose (also packed with sanitizer) eventually goes into the bottom of the brite tank. I say "filter" because this is not the type of filter you use to make a "filtered beer" such as the BMC's. It is a "shit catcher" and will stop lumps of hops and yeast from entering the brite tank. Yeast and other particles actually make it through this filter, the point of it is in case we accidently pull a huge plug of shit from the fermenter.

Now, what we have is our system ready to go, except that our lines are packed with sanitizer... now we fix that problem. Using the side valve on the monster we dump some of the beer until it clears and is ready for the brite tank. Then we open up the valves leading to the end of the hose... chasing out the sanitizer with fresh beer! Once beer flows out the end of the hose we stop the flow and hook it to the bottom of the brite tank. Then we open up the valves, balance the pressure in both tanks, and hope to god our shit catcher doesn't clog with shit.

Here are some pictures to tell the tale:

Here is "The Monster" with its side dump tube, and a transfer hose attached.

Here is a hose, with beer flowing in it...

Here is the CIP cart with the two hoses and the shit catcher. Beer is flowing into the bottom one, through the pump face and filter, and then out the top one. Why the pump you ask? Just in case we need an extra push.

Finally! Here is beer flowing into the bottom of the brite tank! We are venting gas from the CIP arm coming off the top and down the side of the tank. This is so we maintain a constant pressure during the transfer.

That is it! Simple and Easy!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 19: I know nothing!

2009-07-09T20:52:00.001-07:00

Sitting back near the keg washer today... washing kegs... I realized (again) that my journey is just beginning and that I have ALOT to learn still.

I am getting down the art of washing kegs (okay I already have that down), transferring beer, cleaning tanks, filling kegs, emptying the spent grains, cleaning the kettle, and milling in. These things are only a small portion of what needs to be done at our brewery everyday!

I still have to learn about the entire brewing process. I appreciate this more than ever now, brewing is a very delicate process. I will have to spend months more learning this before I can brew on my own and make sure that I am making the "same" beer as Steve. I still have to learn about yeast handling. I still have to learn about maintaining the equipment. I still have to learn about the glycol system. I still have to learn about our process controls. I still have to learn about recipe formulation. I still have to learn about scheduling.... this list could go on for a while, so let's just say that it does and you get my point.

What has been a great help for me so far is my little black book. If time allows, I follow Steve around and write down exactly what he does in the correct order. I make sure to ask questions and highlight the critical steps. After this, I am usually able to start the process of completing these tasks on my own, without being lost in the whirlwind of little things to do.

While the book has been instrumental for me so far, I am also beginning to realize that some things cannot be written in this book. I am going to have to commit to memory many other minute details of each task. I am going to have to develop decision making, problem solving, spatial reasoning, and exact timing.

Again it is these realizations that fortify my conclusion that I have a long journey before I can start my own!

I was going to upload some pictures of my drive down the mountain this morning, but our internet is horrible right now, so they will have to wait. Thanks for reading!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 18: The do's and don'ts

2009-07-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

A short explanation on our puppy situation:

We puppy sat Yogi for two weeks. For a while Kelly and I toyed with the idea of keeping the pup, but after we discussed our future plans more, we knew that we couldn't keep him. We are going to miss him dearly (but I'm excited to sleep in!!!)

So far at the brewery, I have been making a list of the absolute do's and don'ts while on the job. This list will always be a work in progress (especially as we update our equipment and methods) but for now I feel it is complete to share. Keep in mind that I cannot get through a day without having to follow these rules. If I don't follow them, I will for sure break something bad or ruin a batch of beer.

1) ALWAYS vent tanks when adding hot/cold liquids. Also add the liquids in 5-15 second bursts. This will prevent collapsing tanks or spraying hot caustic solution all over the place

2) ALWAYS turn off heating elements (CIP cart and keg cleaner) before the liquid level drops below them. Otherwise they will overheat and break and are very expensive to replace

3) NEVER drag anything metal across the floors. They (the floors) and our stainless steel parts get knicked up enough, no need to accelerate the wear

4) Turn off equipment before unplugging or plugging in

5) Watch your hose spray, especially near sanitizer buckets, power sources, and the nice shiny equipment

6) If it is not clean, it cannot be sanitized

7) Never run pumps dry

8) Never let air or un-sanitized surfaces come in contact with beer

9) ALWAYS turn on tanks starting to fill with beer and turn off tanks finishing emptying

10) If you mess up cleaning or sanitizing anything, it is ALWAYS worth your time to redo the job than risk contaminating beer

I will have to add more to these rules later, but it gives you an idea of what goes through my head all day. BTW, today I was in charge of a beer transfer (tank clean, tank sanitize, fermenter pressurize, tank pressurize, packing lines, transferring beer, clean my mess) while helping with the stout brew. I was even left in charge of the lautering for a good 15 minutes by myself... scary!

Coming soon to the tap room at Lone Peak is bourbon-barrel aged oatmeal stout and winter ale. We cheated and took a small sample today, directly from the barrels, even warm and without carbonation the beer was delicious! I can't wait until its actually ready to be served!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 17: I've Got a Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Infection

2009-07-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

OH MY GOD! The internet at our condo sucks and blogging with this program is very clunky and annoying... Why can't I change the font to Arial? WTF?

By request of my lovely girlfriend Kelly, we are going to discuss yeast, not yeast infections... haha gross

All you home-brewers out there are used to the following series of events:

1) Decide to brew beer

2) Drink beer and fantasize about beer you are about to make

3) Go to homebrew supply store to buy ingredients for brew

Now it gets important!

4) Select one of the many many yeast strains available for your future brewy goodness

5) blah blah blah

6) Yummy beer!

Buying individual yeast strains for every beer is not a reality at the larger scale. At many of the breweries that I am familiar with (including ours) there are only a handful of yeast strains servicing many beers. Actually we use one yeast strain to make eight of our beers! WOW!!! AMAZING!!! Also, once we get a yeast starter, we will use it over and over and over again (more than 10 generations at a minimum) HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE???

Carefully is the answer. We buy a yeast starter from a lab, add it to a brew, and then harvest it for another brew. To ensure no contamination of the yeast the harvesting, handling, and transferring of our yeast is done in dedicated kegs that are meticulously cleaned after every use. We take care to harvest the yeast at the proper time during fermentation and if it sits in the cooler too long before it can be used again, it is acid washed and fed. We also have to ensure that the yeast we harvest will be suitable to make the subsequent beer (for example, don't harvest from a stout to make a pale ale).

From what I can gather, different breweries have very different yeast handling practices. Some buy starters more often than others. Some use their yeast for many many generations, some not so much. Some have many different styles of yeast and some have only one or two.

I'm exhausted, I'm going to bed. We have a puppy for only two more days, and he must know it because he is becoming more and more annoying by the day! Until adoption day (thursday) I will be up at 5:30 am... again.

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 16: I gots a case of the Monday's

2009-07-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

The Fourth of July Celebration in Big Sky was great! Kelly and I ventured over to the brewery for a few beers and a growler fill, then watched a concert, met some cool people, and saw some mediocre fireworks. The highlight of the experience was "getting out" and "letting loose" for the first time (in my opinion) since we have been here. After the official Big Sky event, we went over to a house occupied by some of the employees of the brewery and shot off mortar shells and drank more beer. Great times...

Sunday we also got to go to the 320 Ranch Rodeo, see below the "Montana Zamboni" While enjoying saddle bronc's and bull riding, the damn rodeo clown picked me, out of hundreds of people, from across the arena, to show-off in a dance contest. I pulled out the worm... in horsepoop... and then did some little acrobatic pushup. I should have one but a cute five year old beat me with some out-dated disco moves. I would have rather tried to get a $50 bill from between an angry bull's horns.

So how is the brewing job you ask? It is going great! Today both Steve and I kinda had a case of the Monday's. We brewed, cleaned a fermenter to recieve wort, transferred yeast, and I cleaned about 36 kegs. It was a slow moving lazy day. Tomorrow will be busy busy busy, brewing, cleaning, a beer transfer, and kegging! The days we brew, transfer, and keg in one day are nuts, but we get "far ahead" when we do it, so its worth it to catch up with the brew schedule.

It seems to me that many of the "aspiring brewers" out there, want to not only make beer, but to start their own brewery (and do it soon!). I was thinking about this today, day dreaming about my future too, but I was stopped by the following observation of my life. I know how to make beer, easily on the homebrewing scale and in concept on a larger scale. When I think about managing the whole operation of a brewery though, it scares the shit out of me.

I have learned a lot at Lone Peak so far. I realize now that I have a lot a lot alot more to learn before I could even manage myself at Lone Peak for one day, let alone start my own operation. My future path is developing slowly but is becoming more clear. I need to spend more time at this brewery to learn how to do more than just make beer. I need to go to school. I need to start reading the craft beer industry's relevant publications to understand the trends and new technologies. I need to spend lots more time around this stuff before going out on my own!

Day 15: Mission Impossible 4 - Tom Cruise is Still in the Closet

2009-07-03T19:46:00.000-07:00

I want to go party... this will be a post in pictures because this is all I did all day long.

Day 14: Harry Potter and the Brewer's Stone

2009-07-03T05:20:00.000-07:00

Right about now, Steve and I wish we could do magic. Our new brite tank is in its correct location... but happens to be sideways on dolly's; not in the much more functional vertical position.

If only Hairy Potter would whip out his phoenix feather wand and Wingardium Leviosa (holy shit I spelled that right on the first try... if you don't believe me google it) then we could set this tank upright and get on with life!

We are multiple days behind on the brew-schedule now due to the arrival of the replacement brite tank. There were quite a few road-bumps (punny haha) while the tank was on its way here, and its final arrival was less than planned for. Before I continue here, I have noticed a re-occurring pattern thus far, it seems that we always make and try to meet aggressive brew schedules, and that most often we fall short. I can't say that this is the fault of anyone person, but moreso, the nature of the brewery we work at. The "kinks" haven't all been worked out yet, and guess what? Steve and I are the only two people that are going to work them out, so our brewing time suffers.

Now that we have our new tank, we are going to spend today putting it in the correct position. What this will probably entail is the following tasks: going and getting more chain, climbing into the attic, knocking two holes in the ceiling, hanging a chain pulley off the rafters, attempting to stand the tank up, gently setting it down, and hopefully having a beer when it is all over!

I'll keep e'rrbody up to date on what happens (hopefully tonight). Steve is hoping the "brewing gnomes" take care of this for us... I think we would have a better chance of Daniel Radcliff showing up in costume to help.

Day 13: It's Spelled BRITE Tank not BRIGHT Tank

2009-07-01T21:15:00.001-07:00

What a day!

The notebook worked great today, thanks for asking! We started out kegging the Headplant Pale Ale, our first keg was finished exactly 3 minutes AFTER the distributor showed up for it. Talk about cutting it close. Here is some advice for those of you wanting to start breweries soon. Take your brew schedule seriously. No bar likes to be shorted beer because you didn't finish it in time; no distirbutor likes telling bars that they can't have beer that was ordered (because you didn't finish in time). So far, we have been cutting it close, but have made our distributor deadlines.

I've been impressed (and scared) of the brewing schedule we have at Lone Peak, surprisingly, ours is easy. We can only brew one beer at a time, we have eight fermenters, and two brite (bright) tanks. Steve was telling me today that at his old brewery they brewed EIGHT batches a day! They have a mash mixer, a lauther tun, two kettles, and a whirlpool; that amounts to 4 brews going at one time! Talk about complex.

So back on track, we kegged this morning. Then I was in charge of cleaning the brite (bright) tank while we prepared the Wit Beer for a transfer. Thanks to my notebook I knew what was going on, did most of the prep work myself (without asking for help) and was even a step ahead sometimes!

The distraction for the day (there always is one, tomorrow is distributor pickups) was the arrival of a new brite (bright) tank. The old 20 bbl brite (bright) tank we have didn't work, so its replacement arrived today. At noon the tank arrived... why the hell wasn't it on a flatbed so we could pick it from the side?

Much much later in the day (8 o'cock) here I am trying to shove it in the building. This was after two hours of maneuvering, metal work, and supporting with dolly's and pallet jacks.

And here is the final resting place (for tonight) we got it inside enough to close up the damn brewery, I left at 9 o'cock (not a typo). 14 hour days are fun!

I finished the night up in the hot tub at the condo, drinking a litre of the Headplant Pale and writing this. I'm excited to go to work tomorrow!!!

Day 12: The Little Spencer That Could

2009-06-30T18:08:00.000-07:00

I was on my own again today... WITH NO HUGE SCREWUPS!!!

It was a big confidence booster and probably helped me add some credibility with my (brew)master Steve. What was the difference you ask? Was it me saying "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..." all day? No, even better and its a big deal so pay attention.

My notebook has magically been organizing my mind. I have been thinking about what I am doing, why I am doing it, and what is the correct order of things to do. Then after I do them I have been writing them down. Steve does help me out when I have questions, but it is great to write down the answers immediately so I remember!

My responsibilities today were the following:
Prep bright tank #2 to receive a transfer
Transfer the Headplant Pale Ale from fermenter #2 to BT2
Clean fermenter #2

To prep the bright tank, I had to:
clean it with hot cleaning solution
rinse it with hot water
rinse it with cold water
sanitize it
bleed in CO2
and pressurize it with CO2

To transfer the beer I had to:
trap sanitizer in the lines
drain the sludge from the racking arm
chase out the sanitizer with beer
and fill the bright tank slowly with beer while monitoring the pressure

To clean the fermenter I had to:
vent off the CO2
open and spray inside (watch out for CO2 gas... it'll get ya!)
clean once
clean again
rinse hot
rinse cold
drain
and open it up

At the end of the day I spent 5 minutes cleaning all my tools and parts, the floors, and putting the hoses away.

Because of my magical little notebook, I could, I did, and I can! See the little guy below. I've already filled out 18 whole pages of writing... I don't think this thing is going to last long!

Day 11: Glossary

2009-06-29T16:41:00.000-07:00

This Glossary of my brewery is for all of you out there who want to know what I am talking about in this blog. It is long, but worth it if you want to learn a thing or two about breweries!

First things first, let's go over (quickly) how beer is made in 10 steps:

1) Barley is converted into malt, by steeping, germinating, and kiling.
2) Malt is milled into a mash tun with hot water, this magically creates sugars!
3) The sugar water, wort, is separated from the grain, lautering, through a screen
4) The wort is boiled, hops are added
5) The wort is cooled and transferred to a fermenter
6) Yeast is added to the fermenter, eating sugar and making alcohol! Now we have beer!
7) The beer is cooled in preparation for packaging
8) The beer is transferred to a bright tank, the carbonation levels are controlled
9) The beer is transferred to kegs and served!
10) We drink!

Now is the glossary!

Malt - One of the 4 main ingredients of beer (malt, water, hops, yeast). Malt starts as barley, it is processed by steeping it in water, letting the seed germinate, and then kilning the seed to stop the growing process. All this work "tricked" the seed into creating enzymes that will eventually break down the starches stored in the endosperm of the seed into sugars!

Milling - Before malt can be used to make beer, the insides of the seeds need to be exposed so that the enzymes and starches can mix together (with the help of hot water). The malt is ground between two ridged rollers, which tear open the seeds, while leaving the husks mostly intact (there is a reason for this!).

This is the mill we use to grind the malt. The malt arrives in 55 lb. bags; we dump them into the hopper on the mill, after it is ground it is carried upstairs to a hopper above the mash tun by a conveying system (the two vertical pipes next to the mill).

Mash/Lauter Tun - Ground malt (grist) is mixed with hot water as it is added to the mash tun. In the mash tun, the mixture is homogenized, then allowed to sit for ~1 hour. During this time, the enzymes in the malt act on the starches creating sugars (yeast food!)

Lautering - When mashing is sufficiently complete, the sugar water (wort) is separated from the grain husks. Remember before I mentioned that the husks needed to be torn but remain intact after milling? The intact husk pieces form a filter bed on top of a screen which the wort percolates through. The filter bed traps even the smallest particles from traveling with the wort into the kettle.

The mash/lauter tun and grist hopper above. The door at the bottom is used to remove the used up grains after mashing is complete.

The inside of the mash/lauter tun. At the bottom are screens to help trap the larger husk particles and establish the filter bed during lautering. Also visible on the right is the mash mixture, which is a rotating paddle (of sorts) that is used to homogenize the mash before it is allowed to sit for an hour.

Wort - The sugar water the is extracted from the mashing process. This is boiled in a brew kettle to sterilize it, to help with extracting the hop oils, and for a few other super secret reasons!

Hop Pellets - Instead of adding whole leaf hops, which take up alot of space and are very messy, most brewers today use hop pellets. Whole leaf hops are pelletized to increase density, and uniformity of what is added to a boiling brew kettle. Hops add the bitterness and some aroma compounds to the beer!

Hop Pellets in my hand!

Kettle - This is where the wort is boiled (with hops) before the beer is transferred to the fermenter.

The kettle is usually positioned near the mash tun for easy transfer of the wort. It is heated by a combination of steam and natural gas!

Heat Exchanger - The heat exchanger is used to cool down the wort before it is added to the fermenter. If the wort was boiling when it was added to the fermenter it would kill the yeast!!!

The boxy thing in the middle of this picture is a plate and frame heat exchanger. Multiple thin metal plates divide hot wort and cold water. Heat is transferred through the plates from the hot wort to the cold water. In this heat exchanger hot wort can be added at near boiling temerature and comes out less than 100 degrees!

Fermenter - This is where the yeast eats the sugars in the wort to make beer! There are many different styles of fermenters, our brewery has conical fermenters which have a cone at the bottom to catch the yeast at the bottom.

The fermenter in the front of this picture (currently holding a Pale Ale) has a 10 barrel (20 keg) capacity. The larger one next to it has a 20 barrel (40 keg) capacity!

Bright Tank - Also known as a finishing tank, this is where the beer is transferred before it is packaged (kegged, canned, etc.) In this tank the correct temperature for packaging is reached, and the beer is carbonated to the correct level.

This is a 10 barrel bright tank. Cool!

Keg - Who doesn't know what this is?

You'll notice in the above picture, that there are two main sizes of kegs used. 1/2 barrels (the larger more familiar ones that hold 15.5 gallons) and 1/6 barrels (these smaller kegs in the foreground hold 5.16 gallons). In the bottom right you can see 4 hoses coming from the bottom of the bright tank. We use these hoses with the standard Sankey keg taps to fill the kegs!

Pig - A unique beer packaging solution which holds the same amount of beer that is contained in one 24-can case. The pigs are plastic, and have an expanding bladder which is inserted into them to keep a constant pressure on the beer (keeping it carbonated). They are called pigs because hey, they kinda look like them! See the picture below...

Awwww... isn't it cute!!! "That'll do pig"

Growler - Common to microbreweries, growlers are portable beer-on-the-go packages that hold one gallon of beer. It is common to stop at a brewery and buy a growler for home consumption. Lone Peak sells not only the common glass growlers but also plastic Nalgene brand ones. That way beer can be taken on hiking trips and into national parks or other places where glass is prohibited (hot tubs, ski hills, fraternity main floors...)

Definatly not as cute as a pig

CIP - "Clean-in-place" This term is not only specific to breweries but many other industries (such as the food industry). It is the process of cleaning something, while it is sitting in the same damn place! Most fermenters are cleaned using this method. Look back up at the picture of a fermenter above. On the right side of the fermenter running up and over the top is the CIP arm. The arm extends into the top and center of the vessel where it has a spray ball inside the vessel. Cleaning solution is pumped through the arm, into the vessel, through the spray ball, which sprays off the inside surfaces of the vessel. Because this is the only method used to clean most fermenters their internal surfaces have to be VERY smooth, with no cracks or crevices in the metal so everything is cleaned away.

CIP Cart - This little cart (looks like two R2-D2's with a pump in the middle) is what is used to pump the cleaning solution through the vessels.

Okay so maybe not R2-D2, but it was a good try right?

Sanatizer Bucket - All of the small parts we use in the process (for the most part) have to be sterile. If they weren't then the beer could get contaminated. After using each part it is individually sprayed, cleaned, and placed back into a sanitizing solution.

During the day I can often be seen squatting next to this darn thing putting things in or fishing them out. Be careful not to spray water into it though! The solution will have to be remade.

So that does it for the glossary. If I forgot anything or you want to know something else, please comment and I will add it in the order the request is recieved.

Day 10: The Notebook

2009-06-26T23:09:00.000-07:00

I get more and more excited to write in this blog as the days go by. Thanks to all of you for sharing this experience with me!

The big announcement of the day: We have decided to keep Yogi (the puppy)!!! Seriously though, who didn't see that coming? Below is a picture of us at the top of Ousel Falls.

Onto the beer related content:

Today was a fun day. The morning started out as any other morning should. I really fucked up! I was supposed to hook up the CIP cart to one of our bright tanks to pre-clean it...

--- I should stop right here and notify the world that the terminology used in this blog is specific to what I am learning at the brewery I work at. There are many other ways to do things that may or may not be better and there are many other names for those things. Right or wrong, this is what I know---

... with that said, I had the wrong idea about the pre-cleaning setup. Essentially I ended up letting most of the liquid out of the CIP cart and into the lines leading to the bright tank, while the CIP cart's heating element was still on!!! Luckily, luckily, luckily, the error was caught in time and the heating element still works (for now). When I asked about the cost of replacing the element, the answer was, "you don't want to know." So I am very relieved that the thing still works.

After this mistake I have now decided to keep a notebook. There are soooooo many tasks for me to remember, with so many detail oriented steps to keep in order, I just don't think it is worth my time to "cram" them all in at once. I have a notepad that I am going to keep in my back pocket and write down what I am doing, for example: pre-clean BT2. Then I am going to write down the steps to complete the task, in order, and the things to watch out for.

The plan is for me to be able to use my tool as a way to look back and see exactly what I did so I don't mess up everytime I do something!

Inbetween my new notebook adventure and going into Bozeman to sell beer, did I mention we went into Bozeman to sell beer?, I scrubbed some floors and straighted up a bit. There definately is a magical feeling when you can put in some good hard work to make your brewery shiney!

In Bozeman we hit up the same sales formula as we did for my last sales trip, to Helena last week. This time we didn't have a distributor with us, I think this may have helped a bit. According to my (brew)master Steve, selling beer is just putting your face out there, "ya know, shaking hands and kissing babies." The highlight of the trip was stopping off at Bozeman Brewing Company.

It was a great feeling to enter the domain of another (rival) brewer while feeling welcome and kind of like we were all playing for the same team. I met some great guys over there, they were full of information! They spoke much more technically about their process than I am used to hearing. The biggest takeaway from the trip was that even after mastering one small brewery, and how it works, THERE IS ALOT TO BE LEARNED OUT THERE. I'm guessing the best way to learn it is by working with other people. I also did notice that there are more brewers working at BBC than at my LPB. I'm not sure the overall affect of this, but I am anticipating that each guy has to know ALOT and communicate ALOT ALOT with a large team because they have to work together as a team to generate a consistent product. I am looking forward to that type of atmosphere in the future someday. I bet one would learn alot.

Our canning line should be arriving anyday now (it is 7 weeks late)! I am excited to experiment and implement it into our process!

Cheers, Prosit, and Skoal!

Day 9: Spencer's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day!

2009-06-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

Although I may look happy, at the very least content, or even tolerating, in the picture below... let me assure you I am in agony!

Little did I realize that brewing a 10 bbl batch of Outlaw Amber and kegging the first half of a 20 bbl batch of Lone Peak IPA in the same day is HARDWORK!!! Worst of all, I started the day off feeling tired and out-of-it. Must be a puppy hangover; the little guy keeps me up all night. I took on the role of being a klutz because of my puppy hangover and I must have messed up everything that I did today, which got increasingly frustrating as the hours flew by. The icing on the cake was my lower back spasms which started a little after lunch and peaked during the aforementioned picture.

On the lighter side, at least I didn't have to dump a batch of beer (a brewer's worst nightmare) and after a walk with the dog this evening, I can stand up straight again!!!

On the lighter lighter side, this was by far the worst day I have had on the job so far and yet it still went by pretty quickly. I know that my mistakes have already turned into lessons. Better yet, our big push to get beer out the door for the distributors is pretty much over. Hell yeah!

I'm exhausted, I don't want to write anymore. If anyone out there has requests for content related to brewing, please ask!

I've decided that on top of a glossary of brewing terminology I am also going to write up some descriptions of the tasks we brewers do in between the well known "processes" in brewing. Stay Tuned!

Below: training in our new beer watchdog!!!

Day 8: "Home Alone 4"

2009-06-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

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!

Day 7: Puppy Sitting and Kegging!

2009-06-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

Kelly and I inherited a 3 month old puppy (temporarily)! The owners of the brewery (Steve and Vicky) recently bred and sold a litter of chocolate lab puppies. Today, Vicky received a phone call that one of the puppies was coming back. It turns out that the couple who adopted him has a 4 year-old grandson that is a little too small to be rough-housing with a growing puppy! Vicky asked if Kelly and I could run Puppy Boarding School for a while; of course I said yeah!!!!

We already took him on a walk at the base of Lone Mountain. He knows how to sit, stay (sort of), and he is decent at heeling. Now he is on the floor all tuckered out, laying against my leg.

Onto the beer! I kegged today for the first time. I have been told by my (brew)master Steve, see picture below, that packaging is the MOST important step in the brewing process. In practice, it is true that every step is the MOST important step in the brewing process. The point of saying that packaging is reminds one not to slack when packaging beer. "You can make the best beer in the world, but if you put it in a dirty keg, it is going to taste like shit."

Fostering this mindset, I am learning to be meticulous in every detail of keg cleaning, tank cleaning, beer transfer, and keg filling. This part of the process is actually quite challenging as well. Keeping track of all the hoses and valves while trying to save every last drop is a great game. For example, we had Steve 15 feet in the air today on a ladder with a hose. This hose happened to be filled with good beer that we wanted to transfer into the bright tank, and the only way to get at it was using a combination of pressurized CO2 and our friend Mr. Gravity.

Hopefully in the next month or so I will be able to complete these tasks unsupervised. For now, I am having fun learning and working as a team.

Soon to come for the beer-illiterate... a glossary of terms!!! Stay tuned, hopefully I will have it finished this weekend.

Day 6: The Tale of Lone Peak Brewery (and me)

2009-06-22T19:39:00.000-07:00

First off, thanks to everyone who has been reading this blog! I would love to hear your comments and feedback. Many of you have been wondering, how the hell did I end up in Montana at Lone Peak Brewery? I skipped over this story completely in my first blog post, well here is the rest of it.

I left off, sitting in a cube, at a chemical process equipment company in Minneapolis. Cube life just isn't for me. I don't have anything bad to say about the company or industry I was in, I just knew from day one that I was destined for a different path. Now, I had been trying to find a brewing job since I graduated college. "Come on," I thought, "I have a ChemE degree from the U of M! Getting a job in the brewing industry should be easy." Boy was I wrong!

My first applications went out to Miller, Coors, A-B, and Sam Adams. All online applications. Here is advice for anyone who applies for jobs online, it is a waste of time. I never heard back from any of them. Even with a contact at Miller Brewery, I never could get near the door. Soon I decided that networking was the only way I could pull off getting a job. Who the hell do I network with? I don't know anyone in the industry... ANYONE.

By now, I had discovered a website, www.probrewer.com. ProBrewer is a GREAT resource for the brewing industry and finding job posting. I started applying for every job posting that I found. I only got back a few responses from my resumes and cover letters. Most of them telling me "you don't have enough experience" (it seems the standard request is 3-5 years experience). That is a bullshit request! At least for the dedicated and determined!

So now was the time to start hitting up the local beer scene, and hitting it hard. I emailed every local brewer and brewery owner that I could. What did I ask for? Advice, lunch, a brew day, anything to teach me more. I joined the BeerAdvocate community. I started showing up to beer events. While at the events I made it a point to introduce myself to everyone who would look at me, salesmen, brewers, owners, supporters, distributors, even random bar patrons. Soon I found myself emailing with beer reps; I got to spend a day brewing at Tyranena; I sat down to lunch with the CEO of JJ Taylor and the owner of Summit Brewery. The only reason any of these people helped me was because I asked for help. I got some great advice and great perspectives on the industry, but still not the big break that I had been looking for. I had an idea how to open the door though.

My next plan was brewing school. I have been accepted to the Master Brewer's Program at UC Davis and for a Master's Degree in Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University. My plan was to attend one of these programs when my time (and money) permitted, I would use my brewing education as the key to open the door!

Now it was March, 2009. I was in Big Sky, Montana, with my girlfriend Kelly and her family on a ski trip. Thankfully I was fortunate enough to tear apart my ACL doing karate a few months earlier and couldn't ski. So what else is there to do in a ski town? It so happens that there is a brewery in Big Sky, Lone Peak Brewery to be exact. I had actually found a job posting on ProBrewer for Lone Peak a year before: "Small craft brewery, located in ski town, mountainside condo provided..." Are you kidding me? I couldn't even describe my dream job better. Too bad that Steve, the owner of the brewery wrote me an email saying that I was not experienced enough (or so he thought).

Back to the story, I couldn't ski, so I used my talents for talking to people, networking, asking for things, and I went to the brewery and asked to meet the owner. We had a beer together. I introduced myself as an aspiring brewer and I asked him if I could spend the day making beer with him later that week. He thought it was a great idea and loved to help me learn a little about my future job and accepted.

It was Thursday, Kelly's family was on the mountain, and I showed up to the brewery at 10AM to make a batch of Hopfest '09. It is hard for me to explain exactly what happened that day. I can't say that I did anything extraordinary. All I did was show up, be myself, and work hard. What happened at the end of the day was a miracle though. Steve asked me "So, what do you think about coming back here in the summer to brew with me?" I WAS FINALLY IN! I FINALLY HAD MY FOOT IN THE DOOR! (This is by far the hardest part for this industry)

Here I am! I'm at my ultimate dream job (for now at least). How did I get here? I had the confidence to network and talk to anyone who was remotely related to my dream job. Sometimes I would find myself sitting at a table with beer salesmen and distributors who I had nothing in common with and knew noone, Akward! Sometimes I was told I was a waste of someone else's time. Sometimes I was laughed at. I never let any of that get me down.

Right now I am writing this story because this is the story that I wish I could have been reading for the last two years while I was doing my searching.

Skoal, Prosit, and Cheers to the confidence to never give up!

Day Off: Life in the Clouds!

2009-06-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

This is the view entering the mountain village where we live in Big Sky. The elevation of our condo is just over 7,000 ft. The other day we found out that we are actually living in heaven, in the clouds, and it actually isn't as cool as we thought. Regard "Exhibit B" below: same picture, same view, can't even see the lake!!!

This weekend was amazing! Friday night I went to the Wild West Saloon in West Yellowstone, BEST PIZZA IN THE WORLD!!! (and the crust is made with Lone Peak Outlaw Amber) On the drive home, we saw tons and tons and tons of Elk as we drove through Yellowstone National Park.

Saturday was a busy day, in the morning a few of us hiked up Beehive Basin in Big Sky. There are some amazing views and amazing houses up there. No animal sightings, but great conversation with Pastor Doug and Kelly's boss Jeff. We didn't make it up to the top of the hike due to snow, but it was a great time. In the evening Kelly and I went out to Ted's Montana Grill in Bozeman. Delicious food, great service, and a gift certificate paid!!!

Sunday was filled with aminals, on the morning drive to Bozeman, Kelly and I saw a black bear eating a roadkill'd dear (our first "bear jam" of the day). Later on we ended up in Yellowstone National Park. We saw numerous buffalo, elk, and bears, as well as a fox and a few other critters. Too bad we haven't seen a Bull Moose yet. Anyone know where they hide?

What does this post have to do with beer? Everything. We drank our Lone Peak beer friday night at the grand re-opening of the Wild West Saloon. We were there to represent ourselves. On Saturday as we wine'd and dine'd we made some good contacts at Ted's and will be talking to them soon about carrying Lone Peak. And, on Sunday, we brought along a special Nalgene growler of Hellroaring ESB and sipped on it as we hiked around the park!

Working in a brewery is the best job in the world. I can work while I'm having fun, and while I'm having fun I can enjoy what I did at work!

This week: let's take a day off with the boss and go rafting?

Day 5: Week one is finally over!!!

2009-06-19T20:43:00.000-07:00

Today was the culmination of all of the hard work that I have put in this week. Like I said before, the art of brewing is just a completing a series of tasks over and over and over again. The challenge is doing them precisely the same way every time! I have been getting better at these little tasks and was "put to the test" this afternoon. No longer was I being walked through the tasks, I was asked to perform them.

I'm exhausted, this has been a fulfilling but tiring week.

Day 4: Sell the damn thang!

2009-06-18T19:59:00.000-07:00

Today I journeyed to Helena, the capitol of Montana, to sell our delicious brews. Arriving at Lone Peak Brewery at 7 in the AM, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. By the end of the day, it was exactly what I expected it would be! (weird how that works out huh?)

Sales has always been and always will be about selling yourself. Stepping into the realm of a distributor, our first stop of the day, is like entering another world. I know not all distributors are the same, but the one we visited, and probably MOST out there, are dedicated to their BMC’s (Bud, Miller, Coors). Selling BMC, also as most know, is not about selling taste. It isn’t about selling a product that offers “more” than the competitor’s product. They are all selling the same damn thing, the same damn widget. How do they achieve selling these unexciting widgets day after day, year after year? Selling themselves.

So how is this different when selling craft beer? Now, after I sell myself, there is something delicious to back it up! Selling beer is incredibly easy, as long as you are confident, outgoing, and the salesmen you are with (from the distributor) have a good rapport with the establishments you attend.

I know this is a very over simplified view of how selling beer really is. There are many levels of complexity that exist. The most important step though, before even getting deep into the complex part, is getting the handshake commitment. How does that happen? Through the three things I listed above.

Tonight I got to go home with four half-growlers of Lone Peak Beer. I’ve split the first two with Kelly before writing this, and I have two more to go! I feel great, it is beautiful outside, and hopefully I’ll see a moose soon!

Tomorrow: Brewing an IPA, cleaning a tank, and showing up to a beer premier (rhymes) in West Yellowstone!

Day 3: I love lamp... I mean life

2009-06-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

I am truly so so so sorry to my dedicated fans that I did not post yesterday! I came home from a 10 hour day that included cleaning draft lines, cleaning kegs, harvesting yeast, cleaning floors, and more stuff that I forgot. I was so exhausted that I got all tuckered out (Kelly thinks it is adorable when I am that tired) and fell asleep by 9:30 p.m.

Today was an amazing day! The drive down the mountain was an eyeopener to say the least. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping (still no damn moose yet), I am still overwhelmed by the unspoiled beauty of this place. During a morning of keg cleaning and helping brew a batch of Belgian Wit I found myself randomly smiling for the first time in a few days. I felt grateful and eternally happy for the opportunity that I have. It might have helped that the whole time Steve and I were rocking out to the Sirius rock station. During the afternoon we had some "bumps" in the brewing process, nothing a little troubleshooting couldn't solve

I learn so much about working in and running a brewery everyday.
- You are subjected to the will of the mighty distributor, you need to keep up and provide the beer to them, or they get mad.
- Scheduling is huge, and not just when to make the beer, but when to transfer it, finish it, package it...
- You also have to schedule clean the brewhouse, fermenters, bright tanks, and kegs/pigs/bottles/cans.
- Everything that needs to be done in a brewery, whether cleaning a tube, or boiling a kettle, is equally important
- Each task needs to be perfected, there is always the proper order of things to do, if you mess it up, you mess up the beer
- Cleaning/Sterilizing is a way of life and a mindset
- The jobs are repetitive, make them fun!

For all you visual people out there, here are some pictures of where I spend all my time now:

This is the back, showing some conical fermenters on the right, a clean/sanitize cart in front, a bright tank in back, and the keg washer in the back left corner

Here is a view from the front of the brewery looking back, the tank on the right is the hot liquor (water) tank, and then there are some conical fermenters!

Here is the almighty brewhaus! Through the windows is the tap room portion of the brewery, on the left is the mash/lauter tun, on the right is the kettle.

Day 1: Now Officially a Brewer!

2009-06-15T17:21:00.001-07:00

See Above: When I was a home brewer, it was a much simpler time.

On the bottom, you can see me "racking" a particularly astounding oatmeal stout. Cleanup time: 10 - 15 minutes.

On the top, you can see the 50 or so "pigs" that I had the fortune of cleaning today. Cleanup time: 3 hours.

Today was my first day as a brewer at Lone Peak Brewery. Here is today's lesson: professional brewing and home brewing are VERY VERY DIFFERENT. They are worlds apart in fact. One is a job and one is a hobby. Can anyone tell me a hobby they have that entails a 9 hour day of repetitive tasks and heavy lifting? Here is my advice to you "aspiring brewers" who have tons of home brewing experience. Go spend a day at a brewery. When you are there make sure you stay from the heating of the hot liquor tank, to the cleaning of the kettle and lauter tun.

I don't want to paint a negative picture about today. I had an incredible day. It was filled with hard work, learning, the smell of beer brewing, and ended with a huge sense of self satisfaction. I am excitedly looking forward to my future in this industry. For the time being, I am going to have to work hard learning the ropes, and hopefully have a little fun in the process.

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3...

2009-06-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

Commencement, The beginning of the tail.

How coincidental! The first fuzzy animal that Kelly (my lovely beautiful lady) and I spotted in Montana was a Gopher! Too bad he wasn't as friendly as our mascot back home, Goldy Gopher.

The background on me (and Kelly) leading up to this spotting goes like this:

Kelly gave me her phone number while we were attending the University of Minnesota, and more specifically at Burrito Loco, one of the best burrito, quesadilla, and nacho places in the entire world. After that dating ensued. Then I graduated and used my Chemical Engineering degree for it's intended purpose, becoming and engineer. I got bored! Very Very Bored! I wanted to switch it up, I decided to follow my dream of being a brewer.

(stay tuned for this part of the story!)

Fast forward a few months, and here I am! Living in a mountainside condo with my girl, making beer, and having the time of my life!!!

We are still keeping our eyes peeled for meese (plural of moose) and bears. Hopefully I can post some pictures of them soon!

In the future, I will actually be focusing this blog on my journey in the brewing world. I will tell of my successes and mistakes, my learnings and teachings, my insights and overlooks, etc. It will be a work in progess!

Thanks for reading!