Best mohawk in Grand Rapids!

A couple more weeks have passed since I started my apprenticeship at Founders. Alec, the Production Supervisor, has been super informative. He has been taking me around and going over what it takes to run a brewery. We looked at boilers, glycol chillers, CO2 systems, and discussed many little juicy tidbits that will help us build the Black Star brewery more wisely. I also spent some time in the brewhouse, cellar, and even some Laverne & Shirley time on the bottling line.

I discovered that working in the brewhouse is all about trying to make the wort come out exactly the same as the last batch. It’s the routine fruition of a beer’s inspired design. After I spent time with the head-brewer Jeremy, I got to see his “beer personality.” He likes to simplify and often re-uses many ingredients in different beers; for example, he really likes magnum hops for a clean bittering addition.

The cellar is pretty interesting too. It’s where the magic happens…magic and a lot of chemicals. There’s way more going on there than meets the eye. On the surface it may just look like you’re moving beer from one place to another, however, moving thousands of gallons of beer, ensuring its quality, and then preparing the previous tank for another batch of wort can get pretty complex. Fortunately, I’ve been able to use my previous cleaning validation and water analysis experience to make suggestions on processes and point out potential contamination issues. Oh, and did I mention that I got to go 90 feet below the ground surface into old gypsum mines to help sample barrel aged beers? Some have been down there for over 2 years! They didn’t tell me it was going to be 40 degrees though…I may have pneumonia.

Let’s see — the bottling line is, well, a bottling line. I participated in the set-up and clean-up of the filler and spent countless hours (16 is countless, right?) loading bottles onto the belt at one end and taking bottles off the belt at the other end. I know we won’t have a bottling line at the Black Star brewery, but this stuff is good to know anyways. Plus, I learned that “low-fill” bottles are a bad thing for production profit, but a great thing for taking a box home for myself!