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 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 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!!!

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

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!