Friday, May 08, 2009

Brewpub and Brewery Operations: Day 5

Today was bottling day for the most part. Tom and I and a few students were in early at 8am to sanitize equipment and bottles. Once the rest of the class showed up, we started the explanation of and demonstration of the bottling process - then turned the students loose.

Both beers smelled and tasted pretty good having only been fermented since Monday - both had pretty good attenuation. The lager went to 1.012 and the ale to 1.015. We got just under two cases for each, and they're now safely conditioning in a store room until two weeks from today, when we'll crack them open. Keep your fingers crossed.

After cleaning up, we went to the classroom to take the RAMP exam, which Tom will score and process for us. We then started watching a rather commercialized video on beer clean glasses until the VCR-computer combination stopped working. Hopefully we can finish that up next Friday. Why wait until next Friday? Field trips start on Monday!

Tom is taking one group to Red Star in Greensburg to watch some brewing, then heading to Rock Bottom. I'll be taking a group to Marzoni's to watch some brewing, and then head up to Otto's for lunch and a tour. Should be fun.

3 comments:

Adam said...

Not sure if you've been to Otto's recently or not, but, I'm pretty sure the beer and food are getting even better. I get there about once a year.

Nate said...

Hey Adam! It's been a while since I've been up there ... right after Xmas. Oddly enough, I'm going up there tomorrow (word is that the Barrel Aged Jolly Roger is still on tap!!!) and then back again with the students on Monday.

Adam said...

It was as of last weekend. I didn't get to try it though :-(

Let us know how it is.