Day 7: Puppy Sitting and Kegging!

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.