Today was a bit of a slow day. There was no real heavy lifting, the temperature only reached the mid nineties instead of 100, and I even got to sleep in. The brewer had to be at an off-site meeting this morning and told me to show up at 10:30. I'm staying only 30 minutes away so that's prety easy. Of course as meetings are wont to do, it went long and we didn't really get started until about noon. All we really did today was clean the mash tun, kettle, hoses and heat exchangers and set up the day's special cask offering. The cleaning part sounds harder than it really is. There's no climbing into the kettle with rubber gloves and scouring pads. You basically just mix up a caustic solution and cycle it through the system with a pump. It takes time, but it's mostly connecting and disconnecting parts and opening and closing valves.
By the time I'd gotten the system cleaned and rinsed, Crawford had managed get the night's cask set up between giving me instructions on how to run the cleaning cycles. The cask is kind of the cool part. When I came in on Monday we'd gotten to discussing beer ideas and I'd mentioned I'd always wanted to make a tea beer. Turns out the same idea had been rolling around in his head. On Wednesday, one of the attendees at the beer dinner asked if he'd ever made a tea beer and suggested Lapsang Souchong, a smoked tea. This morning at his meeting someone mentioned the same tea and I did the same when he came back. That was just too much celestial guidance and he went out to the store to pick up some tea (although a Darjeeling black instead of the smoked tea) and by that afternoon he had the newly tea-infused beer in the cask and ready to serve. It's pretty cool to know that I was a major part in a brewpub beer existing.
We were finished early today so I had time to change clothes and sit at the bar waiting for the tea beer to be tapped and Hank to show up. The beer turned out pretty well and dinner (grilled lamb loin with a mushroom demi glace) was awesome. It's always nice to get some time to hang out with Hank.
1 comment:
Congratulations on influencing the beer selection. While the cleaning was the majority of the experience, I imagine the flavor input is the reason you did it.
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