Looking at the build-out progress, aside from finishing up some painting this weekend, we'll be ready for the oak flooring to be installed in a couple weeks and the tiling should be finished this upcoming week. The lighting will hopefully be installed this week and most of the finish electrical work should be finished. We've got loads of staining and finishing of the woodwork in the coming weeks and also need to build our banquette seating for which we're getting help from our good friend, Tim Moore. The mechanicals are pretty much done now with a fan on the steam vent being the last big installation, as that should really help the evaporation on the boil and reduce boil-overs.
Now for fun stuff - the updates on the beer! On January 4th, we moved the Pale Ale (or Imperial Pale Ale as it turned out) from the fermentor to the bright tank. It took a little longer than we thought, but the results were better than expected. The biggest problem was forgetting to put a valve back on the bright tank after cleaning it. After spending an hour cleaning up a gallon or so of foamy beer on the floor of the walk-in-cooler, we won't make that mistake again. The carbonation only took about 2 hours and we could sample it right out of the bright tank....yum. Considering we didn't have our temperature controllers setup yet for the fermentor on this batch and it came in at 8% ABV instead of 6%, the beer tastes great and will knock you on your butt if you're not careful. Meanwhile the Soft Tail was fermenting nicely in our 6 barrel (bbl) fermentor. Over the weekend of Jan 8th, our assistant brewer, Patrick Whisler, was a huge help in kegging the Pale Ale into whatever Corny kegs we could find so that we could move the Soft Tail into the bright tank.
On Sunday Jan 9th, we brewed our first batch of Bohemian Blonde. The numbers came out great with excellent efficiency and things really seemed to go smooth that day. The day finished off well with the Packer's taking out the Eagles in the first round of the playoffs. A good day for Dave.
On Tuesday morning, we still had about 6 Corny kegs to fill of the Pale Ale in order to empty the bright tank. We also were going to brew our next batch, Hard Tail, on Tuesday. The only problem was that the Hard Tail (to be brewed) needed to go into the fermentor that was still being occupied by the Soft Tail. Therefore, the Pale Ale from the bright tank needed to have it's kegging finished, emptied, cleaned and filled with the Soft Tail. To make matters more interesting, not only did the Soft Tail then need to get transferred to the bright tank, and then the now-empty fermenter needed to get cleaned, but the fermentor needed to be dropped through a trap door in the floor down to it's permanent location in the basement. Patrick was there to help all day, but it was a crazy day to say the least and way too much to get accomplished all in one day. At the end of the day, though, we brewed the Hard Tail (although not without some lessons learned), got the Soft Tail in the bright tank, moved the fermentor downstairs, and filled the fermentor with the Hard Tail. It was a long day, and props to Patrick for his amazing effort! I'm happy to say the Hard Tail is now percolating away in the fermentor nicely and the Soft Tail in the bright tank tastes fantastic.
So, with the Bohemian Blonde in the 3 bbl fermentor and the Hard Tail in the 6 bbl fermentor for the next week and half, we have some time to work on the build-out activities and a build a keg washer / filler for our 36 half-barrel kegs that should be arriving this week. Pretty exciting! As always, we appreciate your support and can't wait to get the doors open. Below are some pictures of the 3 bbl fermentor getting lowered down into the basement.
No comments:
Post a Comment