As mentioned in last weeks blog, the chilling of the fermenters has never really worked. While writting last weeks blog we thought we had fixed the issue by swapping the chiller units. Although there was a fault with the chiller, and with the auto function of the system, that wasnt the end of it. Basically, the whole system was just didnt work, even with a working chiller, the pipe work was just not moving the chilling fluid around, and hence the beer in the fermenters was not chilling. This is a huge problem, as when beer ferments, it generates heat, which needs to be kept under control, as beer fermented at higher temperatures have certain taste characteristics. We also wanted to chill the beer down to 0 degrees C, which helps the yeast drop out, making for a clearer tastier beer.
We have managed to get the chilling sorted out, with a mix of effort from the installers and us. So Boring Brown Beer has been sat at 0C for the last few days, and will be packaged tomorrow, opening up a fermenter for a brew of Black Perle on Tuesday. The beer formally known as Hit The Lights got to 0C yesterday, and will be packaged on Wednesday, opening up our second fermenter for a batch or Mariana Trench on Thursday. Above you can see Bryan cleaning our brand new casks ready for this. We haven't managed to get a proper cask washer, so we made it up as we went along.
I say the beer formally know as Hit The Lights, as this beer will be released with a different name, as it is not the beer we were expecting. This is no big surprise, as we were still learning the kit when this was brewed, so things came out a little different. But not in a bad way. There will be a blog to follow on this i am sure.
To finish off the week we were invited along to Magpie And Crown in Brentford for a meet the brewer event. This is a great pub close to the brewery, with a great selection of guest and bottled beers. A while ago they brought our first key key of beer. This beer was the collaboration beer we made with the London Brewing Co up and the Bull in Highgate called Shark Biscuit. This has been sat in their celler while they installed the required lines to serve key kegs. The night was a lot of fun, with some great people to talk to, and the beer was on top form. It should be on for a few days now, so if you can you should get down there and try some.
To this weeks pictures. And not a lot has changed I am afraid.
The 2 front View pictures are very much the same. Although you can just see, on the top one, our bottle filler. Gregg has been setting up and calibrating this ready to get some Boring Brown Beer into some bottles. The brewery has not been used for the whole week, which is hugely disappointing.
There is a picture missing here. I totally forgot to take the rear view shot. Nothing has changed though, it would just be tidier.
The main area of the brewery looks very tidy, which is the result of no brewing, and some very clean brewery owners.
Up on the mezzanine you can see red pipe on the table. We have been making different pipes that we can found that we need.
In the fermenter room you can see that one of the chillers has moved across the room to sit beside fermenters 1 and 2. This is the one that was faulty, and swapped out to be used to chill the cold liquor tank. We have got this one working, to an extent, and don't really need the cold liquor tank chilled, as the brewery is pretty cold as it is. We have decided we don't trust one chiller working on 4 fermenters, so now have 1 on Ellenberg's and one on ours.
So not the most exciting week, and the brewery is still not at 100%. The installers were meant to be in Saturday to tie up all the loose ends, but didn't turn up. But next week is due to be a busy one.
All views and grammatical errors are those of WeirdBeardBryan , and not the Weird Beard collective.
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