Taking it in the Can

So, I got to go by the Tank as they were using the services of Iron Heart Canning. Guess what make of canning line those guys use? Wild Goose! So, here are some notes from my field trip with Moh and the gang at Iron Heart and the Tank.

The Truck from Iron Heart

Here is where the cans are cleaned and sanitized before being purged of O2 and filled.

Keeping the system supplied with the right amount and strength of cleaners and sanitizers

This is a messy process, but they lose very little: Less than 10%

One side of the purge/fill process

Cans are purged of CO2 with O2, then filled with delicious beer, then the lid is slapped on and seamed.

Each can is weighed to insure a proper fill.

Throughout, Willie, pulls random cans out for checking O2 pick up. All of these samples were within tolerances.

Checking again, and again.

Close up of the labeler and spritzer.

Another shot, this one includes the Zahm, which checks for pressure in the cans.

They have this bad boy as the loader, a little redneck engineering.

Blair Goes to a Hop Farm

The backbone of the West Coast IPA

So, Last week I got to go to a hop farm in Apopka. I had been trying to meet up with Richard Smith, the UF plant scientist who has spearheaded the hop growing and breeding program here. We played a little tag, and I honestly was getting a bit frustrated until I found out he is also co-parenting, and has a special needs daughter. Then I felt like a schmuck, which is more in my normal operating mode.

One Monday, super early in the AM, I schlepped up to Apopka and back to see one of the private farms that is experimenting with growing hops in the Sunshine State. This place mainly grows ferns, and does a couple million dollars doing that. Maybe we should get in the fern business...

Ace Hops

Cascade

You can see that the hops are not super well-tended, and considering that, these were really healthy specimens. Ready to be picked.

Cascade

Donald Trump's hand for scale.

The scoop on the hops in Florida is this: We can grow any American strain of hop. We have two seasons as opposed to one, which leads to the same yield per year, but two times for fresh, wet hops, which is awesome. The facility and program is located in Ft. Pierce, and Richard will do a presentation for us, and other brewers from the area. I have gotten Moh from the tank, and Monty from Lincoln's Beard on board, with 26 Degrees, Descarga, and a few others interested as well. The harvest is in August, and we can get a bunch of hops from UF then for free. I have already decided on one beer to collab with Lincoln's Beard on, and am working with Moh on one with the Tank in their Pilot house. We will need a few disposable kegs for those beers, and this is good way to get some recipes scaled up as well.

Hope to see you all soon. I miss you guys.

SITREP: Old Coast Brewing

So, I am on vacation with the ladies, checking out our National and State parks, staying in CCC cabins, attempted camping, and staying at a pirate themed Hostel in St. Augustine. The weather has been uncooperative this week, so I decided to give the ladies a break from canoeing in thunderstorms and head over to the local brewery for an afternoon.

Old Coast Ales has been open for two years now, and is located just south of St Augustine on US1. They have a 7BBl system, and are pretty small. They have partnered with the taco restaurant next door, who delivers food to hungry customers. It was raining a squall, so I am using their stock photo for the exterior shot.

Inside, I found Riley, my beertender, who came from the craft cocktail scene, within which we shared a friend, and he began lining up a great selection of English beers that were perfect for a rainy afternoon. The Brown ale was roasty, well-brewed, and got a lot of its bitterness from the roast malt, and not the hops, like a traditional English Brown.  The Porter, though darker, lacked that roasty bitterness, but felt weightier, and was quite quaffable. The Red was great, as were the West Coast IPA, and the Hazy, which would honestly be a great beer for a hot sunny BBQ in Florida.

I ordered two crowlers which Riley stood for a video and luckily a photo shoot, as I cannot get the video to upload, which is due partly to my Luddism. We talked soda, soda jerking and presentation, and discussed how our opinions of Bukowski changed once we actually had healthier relationships with women. (Riley has a PhD in Literature)

I met with their head brewer, Shawn, and we discussed the finer points of living in small town America, the growing scene here, and took wild guesses on the future of the industry. Their best seller is a blonde ale, and then their hazy session IPA, both of which retail for the same price. They also include the VAT in their pricing, so doing math is not left to customers. Something I think we can adopt.

L: Shawn, R: A regular irregular.

One of the things I liked about this place was that they had a beer board, where a customer could buy a beer for someone. There were beers bought for local realtors, employees of the Gator farm, Local Firemen, you name it.

The beer board

The person has 30 days to claim their beer, and they had to buy a second board to fulfill all the requests.

I got my crowlers and a lesson on crowler filling, and took my leave.  I will certainly be back.

Sanitizing the can and lid.

I did not get a good picture of Riley purging the can of O2, and adding CO2. They do this with an open line on the taps that is directly attached to the CO2 system.

Filling the Crowler with delicious beer. Note the lid.

Sealing her off.

Final note: I went to a craft beer bar, and they had this sign up, which I found ironic, and funny.

Brewing Process 2: Electric Boogaloo

Now, we have our wort in the boil kettle. Since this is a big stout, and we are looking for a higher ABV than your typical stout, we may be adding some adjuncts. In this case we would add Maltodextrin, which is an unfermentable sugar. This increases mouthfeel, head retention, and body, without affecting the flavor or ABV. For increasing ABV, we may add some Belgian Candi sugar. It is sort of like Rock candy in syrup form....basically sugar syrup. Yeast eat this stuff up, and it is an efficient fermentable. There are two ways to do this, add it to the boil, or in fermentation. There are a few advantages for each, but I will not bore you with those details.

Ahoy! Original Gravity Ahead!

A few tests are made before transfer is complete. Above, you see Daniel checking the wort's gravity to determine how close we are to getting the last usable wort out of the mash tun. This test is done several times until Original (pre-fermentation) gravity is reached. Once we get to the volume we want, we check again with a hydrometer. pictured below.

Now, the beer is in the boil kettle, where it will boil between 60-90 minutes. Today, we are doing a 90 minute boil. Transferring the beer over to the kettle, the beer is at about 170F, and we start the boil kettle while doing the transfer, so that we get a little more efficiency. Either bittering hops, or hop oils are added to the boil, as well as any adjuncts. Below is a photo of Daniel adding the hop oils. Hop oils are more commonly used now because of the mess from using hop pellets, or whole cone cone hops in the boil. Using oil raises the volume of beer significantly. More drinkable beer per batch = more sellable beer per batch. Hop oils are the way to go, yo.

Daniel adding hop oil

More later....Transfer to cold side....I know, I know, but you will have to wait. I have beer to brew!

They keep feeding me.

Brewing At The Beard: Adapt and Overcome

Today, although nursing a hand that lost a fight with an errant surfboard fin, I am at Lincoln's Beard with Monty and Daniel, brewing a Stout. Today, I am going to walk us through the Pro brew process as it applies to their equipment. Some of the details will change since we have a dedicated brewhouse, but the process, and more importantly, the adjustments are key to making the mostest, bestest, beer one can while pushing the envelope of size limitations (BAKAW!!)

When we arrive at 6:30, Daniel is here and warming up the mash tun to the desired temp. Lincoln's beard does not have a dedicated hot liquor tank, so this process uses a lot of water. Once the mash tun is at the desired temp, we add grain to the mill and that grain is mixed with water and steeped.

Daniel Adding malt to the Mill.

In this case, we are reaching the limit of the mash tun's capacity, so having control over the water flow is of the utmost importance if you want to get all the grain in this big olde stout. (They don't have a flowmeter)

This baby is packed!

Monty smashing doughballs anonymously.

Once the water and milled malt are added, they are mixed to insure that any doughballs (Jason's HS nickname) are broken up, so that water can fully saturate the grain and essentially make a tea of maltose and other sugars. At this point, I am inspired to create a recipe call "Churchill's Bathroom" we are thinking of a dark sour, but on purpose, maybe some cherry elements to balance the sour. This could be the second beer we brew at FN. The first will be my ESB, as it is the simplest recipe, and is a good hop calibrator for later, hoppier beers.

Once the mash has steeped for about an hour, we Vorlauf, which is to recirculate the liquid in the mash tun to get a clearer mash with less sediment inside. Once we have the wort (Unfermented beer) cleared up, we will then rinse or sparge the grains, rinsing all the sugar out of the grain, while transferring the wort to the boil kettle.

Note the grain in the filter as the wort is recirculated through the mash tun.

This is set up for recirc, with the pump in the foreground.

Like Motor oil, but way tastier.

Adaption will be made along the hot side process to dial in the specific gravity and pH of the wort before fermentation. We couldn't get two bags of grain into the mash tun, because of the flow issue. Brewmaster did not want to exceed a certain grist to water ratio, which makes sense. This is going to be adjusted a couple of ways depending on a few outcomes. likely, the flavor of the pre-boil wort is going to be within tolerances, but the gravity will be light. Boil times can be adjusted to evaporate and raise OG (Original Gravity), simple sugar can be added to the boil, but only if the wort flavor profile is within tolerances. Water can be added to lower the specific gravity, if the beer is too dense.

Things on the hot side are controllable, obviously, having more control on the front end of the process, flowmeter, a grant, and a few other components make the brew day easier and more efficient. Things we will have in our quiver.

What I like about coming here is that I am on the front lines of non-linear thinking about the process and what can go wrong, or what can at least turn a bit. These guys don't have a lot of luxuries, and because of that, they are excellent problem solvers.

Working with larger, more production style brewhouses, like The Tank and Biscayne Bay and Intracoastal, along with smaller outfits like Lincoln's Beard prepares me for the inevitable, by covering most bases. We are somewhere between these two styles of brewhouse.

Also, they feed me.

SOP Series 3/10 Wort Stability Test

This test, like the forced fermentation test requires no special equipment, but is of utmost importance in diagnosing where issues in the brewing process have arisen.

We take 1L of unfermented wort, so pre-pitch, and put it in a sanitized 2L bottle with a one way vent. You simply store that wort while the mother beer is fermenting in a warm space, and if there are signs of fermentation, then it shows there is an issue with your CIP process, or you have a wild yeast or bacterial infection in the beer.

We will do this with every batch of beer, as it acts as a failsafe that prevents us from moving possible infected beer into several other tanks and then contaminating those tanks, as well as the possibility of serving contaminated beer to our customers.

The cost is the same as the forced ferment test, so just the loss of one liter of wort, and some 2L bottles. (These are reusable by the way) I am trying to avoid single use plastic in the brewery wherever possible.

Update: After a visit to the Tank Brewing, I discovered Whirl Paks, and they changed my life. I can do the wort stability test using less than 500ml of wort, simply putting the wort in a bag. I also discovered some other tests that I will explain the efficacy of, and describe the cost/benefit of in the coming days.

SOP Series Part 2 of 10 (Forced Fermentation)

The second thing I want to implement, costs us nothing, yet can ensure that a batch of beer is ready when we release it. The technique is called Forced Fermentation, and is done by very few breweries of our size, but is an essential QC step to ensure consistently excellent beer.

A forced fermentation should be done with each batch of beer. Especially when we are re-using yeast, as this is a good indicator of whether or not the yeast has reached the end of its life span, and can no longer be re-pitched.

We draw a liter of wort from the fermentor and add some yeast slurry to that, putting it in a sanitized container, like a 2L bottle. Then leaving that to ferment at room temp while the mother batch does its thing as well.

Within a few days, due to the high pitching rate (the number of yeast cells per liter of wort) and the higher fermentation temperature, the yeast will fully attenuate, or eat up all the available sugar within the wort, which lets us know the maximum attenuation of that yeast strain during this pitch. The smaller, over pitched, beer will finish before the mother beer letting us know where we should be gravity-wise with the mother beer. We can check this against the recipe, which has the final gravity of the beer as a target.

What this tells us is a few things; if the yeast has been pitched too many times, it will not reach final gravity, which allows us some time to add some more yeast to the batch and properly finish out the beer. Also, if we have a bad batch of yeast, we can also adjust (Although this should be checked by SOP 3, but it still occasionally occurs) This step, which costs us a few 2L plastic bottles and a couple of blow off tubes, can save batches of beer, and maintain flavor consistency.

Here is a link to an article that likely more eloquently explains the process, and has some photos.

Forced Fermentation

10 SOP Procedures for Our brewery (Part 1: Fermentation Temperature Control)

Fermentation Temperature Control is the 4th most important thing to master for brewing consistantly great beer. Numbers one two and three are Cleaning and sanitation.

Pro breweries typically use a propylene glycol chiller system to keep beer at a consistent temperature. Fermentation vessels are jacketed, or are double walled and have coils, or soft tubing that a glycol solution flows through to chill the beer to optimal fermentation temps, and maintain that temp. A thermostat is set  and the system pumps glycol which removes volumes of heat from the fermenter, carried by the glycol then released through compression and evaporation. It is similar to an air conditioner, except focused on the vessel itself, and not the environment. I will attach a video that explains the system if you are interested.

I have been looking at a few glycol systems and am trying to troubleshoot problems so that we can avoid expensive repairs and downtime. One major thing to do involves the plumbing layouts. We will need to have by-passes in the plumbing so that if a pump breaks, or a thermostat fails, or there is a problem with the chiller, we can still control the temperature in our other tanks, only losing production in the one tank. This seems like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised how many breweries lack this bypass.

It is simply a matter of some plumbing and a few valves, but I want to be sure we include this in the process.

Here is quick YOu Tube video for y'all. I love watching this stuff.

Glycol Chiller System How it Works

SITREP 05APR2019 This Time with BEER!!!!

Hello all,

After some alpine climbing a brother can become very hungry and thirsty. Sean drove me over to Mountain Sun brewing for a burger, as it is a classic Boulder establishment, since 1993. They have several locations throughout Colorado, and I went to the Southern Sun location next to Neptune Mountaineering, where there is a climbing museum. I sat at the bar and ordered the Helles, which was excellent, and a burger with a side of chili and fries; also excellent. My neighbors had a huge order of nachos that made me a bit jealous, but I soldiered on.

Southern Sun Boulder, CO

Burger and Big Krane Kolsch

The service is friendly, and they clearly have adopted a system to running the front of the house that works well, is structured enough, but not rigid. They were training a new staff member, and I watched as they used the "Learn one, Do one, Teach one" philosophy that is pretty effective in getting people confident in their tasking. 

I wanted to get a quick look at the brewery, but they were wrapping up when I got there. They have a 10BBL system, similar to our rig, but much older. 

My second beer was the Colorado Kind Ale, and Amber Ale, which is a super popular style here, likely due to New Belgium and their famous Fat Tire Ale. Another well-brewed, well balanced beer that I absolutely recommend. I was pretty tired at this point, and though I was tempted to have another beer, I headed over to get some Ice Cream, and to the climbing museum. I will spare you the details there. This is the night I went to Domo, and gorged on Japan's version of Homestyle food. It is a good thing I am walking and running and climbing, otherwise I would be as big as a house!

Everyone here is friendly, and not pretentious, which is a bit un-nerving coming from the 305. I asked my guide to give me the finger and insult me in a foreign language so I would feel more at home. He obliged me.

On the bus ride back home I blissed out for a bit thinking of how lucky I am to be alive, and how excited I am to brew some beer and create a community space in Miami.

Stinky and happy

Tomorrow, Beer in Aurora!

Denver SITREP 05APR2019 Part 1

Today, honestly, was one of my best days. It started early, and I am a bit stuffed up. A little free advice when y'all get here, DRINK LOTS OF WATER! your mouth will feel dry, and it will help with altitude acclimatization. I have been drinking more than 3 Liters a day + a decent amount of beer and booze. Rant over. Onward to ADVENTURE!

 Got up at the ass-crack of dawn to go climbing with Sean, my guide, where we set out to tackle the First Flatiron direct.

The big boi up there in the front. 1000 feet elevation gain on the hike in, with over 1000 feet of climbing. After slogging up a muddy trail we arrived to find the start still had some snow pile, so we decided to call it an alpine climb.

A few dicey, unprotected moves, then some easier unprotected moves until Sean clipped the eyebolt (OLDE SCHOOL) about 75 feet up the pitch. Dude makes it look easy...It kind of is.... Kind of...

We moved fast...well Sean did. I moved fast for a dude that had not been on rock in over a decade. The climb lends itself to letting go. There are so many movement options that one has to simply climb and not think. I see why so many people free solo this route.

Looking down from the top of the first pitch.

Second pitch. 

Third or fourth, they all start to blend together, as we were finding a groove. Note the slung horn as a belay.

 Her I am, rock you like a torrential downpour...or something like that.

Sean moving swiftly up pitch 4?

Sean, having a moment of reflection, wondering how he got into this mess with a Native Floridian.

 We ran into an injured soloist, with her boyfriend, she broke her ankle. We both offered to lower her so that the Mountain rescue team could get her out of there faster, but they refused. It was odd, and we waited for about 30 minutes until the unit arrived before casting off again. We could have had her on the ground and she could have been halfway to the ambulance had they not refused. People are strange.

Pitch 5, the last full rope stretcher.

 After this, we short-roped the rest of the climbing. It was easy, and safer to move faster as it looked like some weather was headed in.

Obligatory summit shot with Longs Peak in the background.

We made it 4 hours car to car. The trail down was super icy, so we moved slowly. Between that, and the injured climber, we could have gotten nearly an hour off that time. By the way, the rescue squad was still getting her off the ledge. Sometimes having all the gear and personnel makes things worse...Sometimes.