...containing notes from beerme.com that don't seem to fit anywhere else.
I was kind of hoping to take it easy this week, but our supply of All-American Gold is running low. Fortunately, local homebrewer Tom Froehner kindly came by to do all the heavy work, brewing seven barrels of beer while I mostly just watched. I know Tom reads these pages, so I'll leave it to him to explain the important lesson he learned today.
Thanks, Tom!
Reasonably busy day today. Cleaned the draft lines. Did the mid-month excise tax return. Made 28 barrels of root beer and 7 barrels of Red Cream Soda. Ordered hops: 22 pounds of Saaz, 22 pounds of Kent Goldings, 22 pounds of Hallertauer, and 11 pounds of Simcoe. Ordered 25 pounds of sodium benzoate and 25 pounds of citric acid for the root beer.
Of the three root beer tanks, one is empty, one nearly so, and the other (which is hooked up to the bar) is about ¾ full. So I kegged the remaining ten gallons out of the second tank, and filled the two empty tanks with the 14 barrels of root beer I've been holding upstairs.
Chris the bartender called me at home and said that the Orange Cream Soda had (finally) run out. I knew it was getting low, but I thought there was a keg or two left in the tank. Anyway, I'll make some Red Cream Soda to replace it on Monday.
Next week: make Red Cream Soda and lots of Root Beer, brew some All-American Gold, clean and fill kegs, and get some needles stuck in my neck.
Thanks to the busted keg cleaner part, I have a two-week-deep pile of dirty kegs in the cellar. The part arrived late Wednesday afternoon, so I installed it today.
This piece broke...
...so I had to buy this whole thing.
The damned machine still refused to clean the first keg, lighting the "reject" lamp a few seconds after starting the initial rinse. There's a sensor probe in the drain line that is supposed to detect the difference between water and air; it often fouls, so I took it out and cleaned it to no avail. There's also an adjustment knob in the cabinet that increases and decreases the probe's sensitivity. A few minute's tweaking got it reprogrammed, and the day's tedium could begin.
The pub needed a few kegs of beer, and a wholesaler needed a few kegs of root beer (and one keg of Hefeweizen), so I filled them.
Adam and I had tasted the Toil & Trubbel Dubbel the other day and found it a bit sour — lactic. The final keg was about ¾ full, so I disconnected it, cleaned its draft line, and hooked up the leftover sixth-barrels from last month's Summer Arts Festival, along with a new half-barrel. So it's on tap now, but the "official" release will be tomorrow. (When a new beer comes out, we always offer the first pint at the regular price of $2.50, and the second pint for 1¢.)
The final tally: 37 half-barrels, 18 sixth-barrels, and 11 five-gallon kegs cleaned.
Tomorrow: Root Beer Shuffle.
Cleaned the two fermenters from yesterday's filtrations. Filled a couple of quarter-barrels of All-American Gold for the pub; they ran out last night. Still waiting for the keg washer coupler.
Got a call last night that the spine doctor found "lots of damage" in my neck, between C4-C5 and C5-C6. They want to do some sort of injections that will at least tell them which nerves in that area are under pressure, and might even help relieve the problem. Said treatments are scheduled for next Thursday in Omaha. I can't wait.
As promised, eight barrels of Pale Ale got filtered into T1, and six barrels of Hefeweizen went into T3. I cleaned the filter and hoses and went home at 11:30 with a pounding headache. Whee.
After cleaning the draft lines this morning, I kegged off the last of the Brown Ale in Tank #1 and the Hefeweizen in Tank #3. Now they're cleaned, sanitized, and pressurized. Tomorrow I'll filter the Pale Ale into T1 and run the new Hefeweizen into T3.
