Got some exercise

The day got off to an ominous start: I discovered my boots drenched in cat pee — after I put them on — and then got my car stuck in the snow in the alley as I was leaving the house.

I cleaned the fermenter that will be holding tomorrow's Impromptu Pale Ale brew. While that was running, I returned a couple of phone calls and asked the maintenance guys to plug in the truck's heater so it would start this afternoon.

After lunch, I drove out to Duncan to get the new malt delivery. I nearly got the truck stuck in a snowdrift backing into the dock. These pallets are cheap garbage; they're designed to be handled with a forklift, not a pallet jack. Since you can't drive a forklift onto a Mini Mack, and since there's no logistical way for me to maneuver a forklift through the brewery building anyway, the pallets are damned inconvenient. But Dan and I got the three pallets onto the truck, and I headed back to Columbus.

The City of Columbus has an annoying habit of leaving a pile of snow down the middle of the street. This was the second place I nearly got the truck stuck, while backing into the brewery's loading dock.

The pallet jack at the brewery wouldn't fit under the first pallet, and after a few minutes of wrestling with it, I decided it would just be easier to find a properly-constructed pallet and transfer the forty 50-pound bags onto it.

Professionally-stacked bags on a useless pallet

Brewer-stacked bags on a properly-engineered pallet

The malt comes off the truck, into the freight elevator, up to the second floor, down one hallway, around a corner, down another hallway, and through the double doors into the malt room.

The other two pallets fit (barely) on the jack, but I wouldn't have been able to get them off the truck with out the help from Rick from the kitchen. But in the end, all three pallets ended up in their proper place upstairs.

Here's enough malt for ten or twelve batches. The arrow indicates where the malt for tomorrow's brew is situated.