Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Got yeast?

My new yeasts arrived today! Seven liters of 2112 California Lager Yeast, and seven liters of 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen Yeast. I should be able to get three new beers in the tanks next week.



I cleaned F10, the fermenter that held the Weizenbock.



While I was in the fermenter room, I noticed that the temperatures of the root beer holding tanks were about 30°F too warm. This happened a lot last year, too: when the weather gets Really Hot, the glycol machine craps out. I went up on the roof and restarted it.




My summertime bane



Somebody ordered a keg of root beer that they Just Had To Have this afternoon, so I filled one up for them.



Tomorrow: Fill kegs.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

i have always wondered why there are rocks on roofs . . .
i mean, what is the purpose? (except ammo for tossin at unsuspectecting pedestrians ambling about below)

Brewer said...

When did you start buying pitchable sized yeast?

also, I like throwing rocks at pedestrians.

El

Anonymous said...

Make sure you have a clean condensor. The unit has to get rid of the heat. On hot days the refrigerant head pressure will get too high and kick out on high head. Air flow accross the condensor coil is very important also. Sometimes the fan motor bearings will sieze up and the fan will stop, (thus stopping air flow and causing high head pressure) and latter after cooling down, it will work again.

Richard Stueven said...

Good point about the condenser; I'll check it out. The odd thing is, sometimes it kicks out on high head, and sometimes on low. Personally, I think it's haunted.

Richard Stueven said...

An explanation of gravel roofs can be found here. They don't say anything about throwing the rocks at unsuspecting passers-by, but I suspect that's just because the roofers want to keep all the fun for themselves.

Richard Stueven said...

The pitchable yeast started after the Great Cleaning of 2007. I wanted to minimize the variables to make sure I had rooted out the moldy-infection problem. (Remember cleaning out that tank of unfermented wort?) It seems to be working well, so I'll probably stick with it.