Tuesday: Two days in one

After yesterday's fiasco, I hoped to get a lot done today to make up for it.

I found a message on my desk, dated Monday, from the Grand Island wholesaler who didn't place his usual order last week. So he placed it yesterday, and the message says that they'll pick it up today. So much for getting a quick start to the day; I had to fill those kegs right away in case the driver showed up this morning.

I crashed the tank of Bugeater Brown Ale, that is, I turned down the temperature to near-freezing in preparation for filtering the beer later this week. Pretty much every beer in the fermenters - Gold, Hefeweizen, Brown, Schwarzbier, and Maibock - is either ready to filter or will be ready by the end of the week.

Today's Big Project was making 35 barrels (1,085 gallons) of root beer. (Whee.) Fourteen barrels went into fermenter #1, another fourteen into fermenter #2, and seven into one of the three dedicated root beer tanks in the cellar. I lifted thirteen 100-pound bags of sugar and dumped them into the kettle. One of these days, I'll figure out an easier way to get this done.

I didn't bring my computer along today, but it was just as easy to do the recent tax return from home.