Day 18: The do's and don'ts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 10: The Notebook

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!

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"

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!

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)

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 3: I love lamp... I mean life

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.