From Homebrewer to Pro Brewer

If you've followed my facebook or twitter posts you probably know that I've taken a new job. Last week I received my first paycheck from The August Schell Brewery and it was a proud moment for me. I told myself all the way to the bank..."I am no longer an amateur". My first day at Schells (8/24/2010) was almost two years to the day after the I started my chemistry class (8/25/2008) to prepare for the American Brewers Guild. So far it's been great. I am learning a lot and after three full weeks I feel like I am able to contribute to the team instead of just getting in the way. My four months at Summit were also great, I would not trade that experience for the world, but for the sake of comparison this is whole different ball of wax. Summit is a new state of the art brewery. Schells is 150 years old if these walls could talk. I often find myself imagining who may have worked within these walls and when did they work here. In the filter room there are some initials carved into the concrete walls and the guy who has trained me so far told me "Those are my old man’s initials; he worked here back in the 60's". I thought that was so cool. I got to see an attic that is rarely used except to replace blown fuses. Up there were old kegs and wooden box crates. I love the history in this place. I am pretty sure it's haunted by some ex-employees and maybe even Schells drinkers. Good times indeed.



Currently I am spending my days in the filter room. Long story short we are responsible for getting the beer from the fermenters to the bottle house. First we "drop" the beer from the fermenters to the ruh tanks - 'ruh' is German for 'rest' and is pronounced 'roo'. This is where the beer goes after fermentation. The ales will condition for a short time and the lagers will, well, lager here for a little longer. Once that is complete we run the beers through a centrifuge and into a pre-finish tank. This step gets rid of most of the solids in the beer. From the pre-finish tank we send the nearly ready beer thru a DE filter and into bright beer tanks in the bottle house. 'DE' is short for Diatomaceous Earth which is a silica based powder made up of the fossilized remains of hard-shelled algae known as diatoms. It is a great filter aid which allows beer to flow through but catches even the smallest particles still left in the beer. From the bright beer tanks the packaging crew will bottle, can or keg the beer.



After a while I will move to other parts of the brewery and I will post about that when I get there. And in case you're wondering... no, we don't use those old wooden tanks anymore. Unfortunately they've been dry so long they don't hold liquid anymore. Still beautiful.