It's the brewing life for me. I dig this job. You gotta work a lot of hours; but you can work those hours whenever you want. I see why brewers typically start work very early in the morning. It takes about 9 hours to brew a batch of beer. Tack on another 3 hours if you want to do a double brew and fill up the fermenter.
Right now I am lounging in bed at 7 AM because all of our fermenters are full of beer that is still fermenting or barely attenuated. We won't be able to brew again for at least 11 days. There is plenty of maintenance cleaning to be done, but the faucets have been cleaned and we cleaned all the lines on Wednesday. (I can taste the difference in the beer). The brewmaster decided to have an easy Friday today. He can do that. As long as the serving vessels are not empty and the costs are not abnormally high, nobody messes with him. He sets his own hours.
I have been bringing home growlers of our beer, but growlers suck. I have worked the old craigslist magic and acquired an old refrigerator from some old lady in a retirement community. $50 for a working fridge that is still in current use in her kitchen. Scott is bringing his work trailer over tomorrow morning and we will go get this bad boy with the help of a full on appliance dolly we use for barrels at the brewery. I don't plan on breaking a sweat. My boss is going to supply all the tapping equipment for me. From now on, when we decide to empty a serving vessel a little bit early- that beer will go into a keg in my fridge. Hell yeah- it's the brewers life for me.
I am finally getting comfortable with operations at the brewery. That shit was pretty overwhelming at first. It's like a big boy erector set that uses giant hoses, clamps, gaskets, tees, elbows, valves and all sorts of other hardware. Everything centers around a huge hot water tank and a powerful pump. I can't tell you how confusing it all was for the first few days.
Brewing has been really fun this week. We made a bitter on Monday. It's called "extra bitter bitter", and it was the first non regular beer that I helped to make. It was also the first beer that has lots of hops in it. I think we used about 11 pounds of hops for a seven barrel batch. Yesterday we brewed a dopplebock. This was the first high gravity beer I've brewed. It made cleaning the mash tun much harder work. That was a lot of grain. The hopper below the mill actually filled up and the grain was spilling out of the test slot right below the gringers of the mill. We used as much grain as we possibly could. Lot's of specialty grain in that dopplebock. We used a lot of hops in that beer as well, but you won't notice with all that malt. The wort was amazingly sticky. I'm really excited about both of these beers.
I'm struggling to find books that I want to read in the Denver library. You see, Denver does not have the greatest collection of sailing books. In fact, there were only two books that I hadn't read. I bought a couple of cheap paperbacks from our local bookstore, but those books have been consumed long ago. I just read "into the wild". It was a cool book, but I want to read about sailing. Oh well, I guess I'll have to give in and read something else. I definitely can't afford to go online and buy sailing books. Did you know that I make minimum wage? Not for much longer. After another week, I'll be working about 24 hours a week at the brewery and earning the same paycheck.
I have a lead for another job. The guy who delivered some chemicals to the brewery was chatting with my boss and telling him about losing two employees. That would be perfect for me. I could walk in to his business and do anything he needs me to do without any training. I would be able to deliver chemicals to all the breweries in town and get to know the brewers. I will be getting his contact info today.
Only 1 week until the Great American Beer Festival. Tony, Mike and Kelly will all be visiting Denver for this glorious event. The largest beer festival in North America will elude us no longer. How to drink so many beers and remain upright? The boys will be attending 2 nights, but I fear that still won't be enough to taste all the beers that we'll want to sample. We'll see. With the one ounce tasters, we should be able to get through most of them.
Well I guess that I should get out of bed. I don't have to be at the brewery until 11 AM, but I got some things that I want to do this morning; like finish off my leftover mexican food from last night. Talk about your breakfast of champions. I fear no BM. Talk about a band name.....
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