Gerst bottling update...

Good news! After several iterations, everyone involved is happy with the label and six-pack art design, and the ATF signed off on the label approval. We've got the labels and six-packs being printed in the next week! It generally takes 3-4 weeks to get all that done, and then you should start to see bottles of Gerst in stores! Here is a sneak peak at the label:

Another cute picture of a lab...

This puppy has really been helping us to improve the quality and shelf-life of our beers over the past year. It's a dissolved oxygen meter. You place a recently bottled beer on the piercer, punch a tube through the bottle cap, and run the beer through the meter. You can also take the meter out into the brewery and test beer at different points in the process.

Why is it important to control dissolved oxygen? Well, in the first stages of fermentation, the yeast needs a certain level of oxygen in the wort to grow and reproduce properly. Once the beer is done fermenting, the oxygen levels will be very low, and you want to keep it that way. Oxygen will react with the great natural flavor compounds in beer and over time will create those old, stale cardboard flavors you taste in beer that is past its prime.

The DO meter has really helped us dial in our process to fight oxygen pickup. Over the past few months we've improved and modified our filtering process, changed our tank cleaning procedures, and fine-tuned the new Comac filler. We've been able to get our dissolved oxygen levels in the final bottled beer down to the same levels the "big" guys can achieve. All in all, it will mean our bottled beers will taste brewery fresh for much longer. As always, you can tell when we bottled any of our beers by checking the "bottled on" date stamped on the right side of the label, and the date stamped on the case box. Cheers!

Pics of the new 120 bbl fermenters

Well, the new 120 bbl fermenters arrived last Wednesday. I decided to rent a carry-deck crane this time instead of trying to use two forklifts. Yes, there are companies that will rent you a crane! I guess they assume that you must know how to use it, if you are renting one. After practicing for a few minutes, we were ready to unload the truck.








Unloading the truck was a breeze with the crane. We just ran a sling to the top and to the legs, and hoisted the tank up onto our loading dock.

























Then, once the tanks were off and the truck was on its way, the hard part began - getting the tanks inside the building and stood up in position. We had our forklift pick up the front (top) of the tank and the crane picked up the legs, and then we slowly drove up the ramp and into the building, stopping every few feet to readjust the boom on the crane to keep from smashing the dock door in.





















Now for the tricky part. These 120 bbl tanks are only a few feet shorter than the roof in the brewery - not enough space above them to pick straight up to stand the tanks up. We couldn't use just our forklift to stand them up - its mast only goes up to 16'. We had to position the crane inside the building and boom way out over the tank. Our forklift was on the other side of the tank. The forklift picked the tank up as high as the mast on the forklift could go, and then we hooked the crane to the other side of the tank and started pulling back. The tank gently leaned over onto its feet, held back by the forklift.




















Once one of the tanks was up, we repeated the whole procedure again for the second tank. Only now, with a lot less space to work in!





















There they both are! Beautiful ain't it! Once all the piping and electrical is done, these babies will be filled and will start happily fermenting away. Which beer do you think we should start off with? I'm thinking Hop Project #64!

New 120 bbl fermenters set to arrive this week...

We'll have two new 120 bbl fermenters arriving this Wednesday (if they don't get clipped by a low-hanging overpass). We'll be setting them up in the space in front of the window from the taproom, unfortunately cutting down on the view of the bottling line from the taproom (or, fortunately, depending on what's going on with the bottling line on any given day).

It's starting to get a little tight in the brewery again, kind of like it was at Marathon before we ran out of room. I'll post some more pics of the tanks and our attempts to stand them up later this week.

Here's a pic from Friday of the tanks being loaded at Newlands Systems in Vancouver. They always look smaller on their sides than once you stand them up, but they are 19' tall and about 9' in diameter.

Fortuitous time

Thank you to all of you who came out for the Fortuitous event. We appreciate each and every one of you! I hope everyone had a great time and that anyone who didn't win a ticket got hooked up by someone who did. I've never had so much great beer in my life, and thank you to everyone who brought out some special stuff to share. We will be doing something like this again in the future, for sure.

Fortuitous Release Saturday Feb 18th at the brewery

Fortuitous Ale release Feb 18th at 2 PM at the brewery

We weren't planning on having any release party at all when we finally finished bottling this beer and got ready to ship it out. But after talking with some of Nashville's fellow beer geeks at the 12th South Winter Warmer, who argued that we would be almost cheating them out of a reason to all get together, we decided to hold an event at the brewery to celebrate Fortuitous' release.

The main problem is that due to Tennessee's archaic beer laws, we can't sell high-gravity beer here (see my previous post from last year for the details of why).

So here is how we plan to do it: We will open up the doors to the brewery at noon on Saturday, Feb 18th. From noon until 2 PM, everyone who comes in will get a free raffle ticket. Then at 2 PM, we will raffle off the 120 special certificates that will allow the holder to purchase up to four bottles of Fortuitous at a separate location (not far from the brewery). Whatever is not purchased on that Saturday will be available to the general public starting the following week. (Or maybe I'll just keep it and drink it all myself - seriously, I'm considering it.)

We don't want people having to camp out or wait in lines outside to get this beer. As long as you get here in time to get a free raffle ticket, you will have a good shot at getting up to four bottles of Fortuitous. We want this to be fun, so come on down for a few hours and join us!

Sly Rye Porter out soon in six-packs!