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I was able to make it down to Coast again for two more days this week. It actually worked out well for me, as I was in Columbia over the weekend for a fantasy football draft, so I went down to Charleston Sunday night.

In case you’re curious, I got Michael Turner, Brady, Boldin, Thomas Jones, Marshawn Lynch, Eddie Royal and Braylon Edwards with my 1st 7 picks (6th slot out of 10, PPR league). I like my squad, especially after week 3 when Lynch comes back, but I did get Fred Jackson as a handcuff.

Where was I? Oh yes, beer…

I was very excited for this week, since Coast was going to brew up their first ever barleywine on Tuesday. However, that meant that Monday was actually very busy. In a commercial brewery, at least a small one, brew day actually begins the day before.

Monday

The first half of Monday was just like a typical Monday at Coast. Since it’s shipping day, we cleaned and filled kegs to go out to the distributor.

Around 1:00 we finished with that and then began preparations for Tuesday’s brew. The first thing we had to do was move the Double IPA out of fermenter 3 and into one of the empty bright tanks. For you homebrewers out there, a bright tank is essentially used for secondary fermentation. You can make additions and even keg beer straight from one of these tanks.

David wanted to add some whole leaf cascade hops to the bright tank to give it some additional dry hopping. To increase the efficiency of the hop oil, we first hand crushed the hops into a nylon bag. So yes, that means that if you have a Double IPA a few weeks from now, I had my hands on your hops. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

After sanitizing the bright tank, we tied the hop bag to a rod inside the tank and began moving the beer. Once that was completed, we cleaned the fermenter to get it ready to hold the beer we were brewing tomorrow.

While the water and PBW was circulating in the fermenter, we started milling the grain to be used the next day. Since we were going to brew a barleywine, which is a high gravity style, we had a LOT of grain to crush. We milled about 15 50-pound bags of grain. That comes out to around 750 pounds.

One other interesting tidbit about Coast’s system. They have 15-barrel fermenters, but the brewing system is only 7.5 barrels. (A barrel is 2 full kegs.) That means that to get a full batch of beer, they actually brew two batches.

While this method is less efficient time-wise, one advantage is that if they don’t hit their gravity or some other desired effect on the first batch, they can compensate on the second batch and get the final product exactly where they want it.

We finished up around 7:00 and I headed out to Moe’s Crosstown Tavern for a burger. I think David stuck around a little while longer to wrap up. It was a long day.

Tuesday, Brew Day

Brew day started at 7 am, although I was a bit late. I underestimated the traffic in North Charleston that early. I didn’t arrive until 7:30. Remind me not to live in North Charleston.

Typically, since Coast brews two batches on brew day, David usually starts around 5 or 6 am. However, we were able to start a bit later because we were only doing one batch today. Due to the amount of grain in one batch, it would make for a very long day to do both in the same day.

My first task of the day was to give the mash tun a quick rub down and start the sanitization process on the fermenter. After I finished that, we started pumping the strike water into the mash tun and began mashing in.

Scott and Rich from the Charleston Beer Exchange joined us for the day, so they also got to participate in the festivities. They were especially helpful during the mash-in.

Rich, David and myself. David is not holding a brewing trophy. It’s a hydrometer.

Trying to stir 750 pounds of wet grain is not easy. Between the four of us, we were able to relieve each other as fatigue set in. It was like white water rafting through oatmeal. I think my deltoids are still sore today.

This barleywine pushed the mash tun to its limits. The beer took more grain than Coast’s Blackbeerd Imperial Stout, which is the highest gravity beer they have made to this point. We filled the mash tun nearly to the top.

Once we were all mashed in, it became a lot like a brew day on my porch. We mashed for about two hours. Then it took about an hour to transfer the wort and sparge the grains. The boil took almost two hours.

Since we were only doing one batch today, there was considerable down time. It was by far the most laid back of my days at the brewery. Brewing is one of those activities where it’s like you hurry up and do something, then you have 30 minutes or more of waiting for something to finish.

You can try to be efficient and clean something or get something else ready while you’re waiting on one thing to finish, but sometimes there is nothing to do but wait. That’s always a good time do a little “quality control” and sample the fruits of your labor!

I had to leave at 5:00 to make it back to Greenville for dinner, so I wasn’t able to see brew day to the end. Since this was such a big beer, it took a lot longer than most brews Coast has done. However, I left the beer in good hands :)

Lessons Learned

After being exposed to most of the different activities that go on at Coast over the four days I’ve worked there, I am in awe that David and Jaime have been able to operate the brewery by themselves. Jaime helps out with the brewing operations, but her primary responsibilities on the business end of things.

With all there is to do and know, it’s amazing that David handles most of the brewing activities himself. I wouldn’t even know where to begin trying to assemble a commercial brewery. While the process of brewing beer is the same no matter what scale you have, there is so much more equipment that you have to know how to operate, and even repair yourself.

For instance, if the pump on the sanitizer jug went out on the keg washer, I’d be sunk. Or if something went wrong with the boiler, or the CO2 compressor, or the brewhouse manifold, and on and on. I guess after 10 years of commercial brewing, you pick up a thing or two, but from my perspective it borders on miraculous.

Final Thoughts After My First Two Weeks

Overall, I have had a great time over the past two weeks, and it’s been an incredible learning experience. I feel very at home in the brewery, and I could see myself brewing commercially some day.

However, I was also very fortunate to be in a brewery that was small enough to where I could help out in all aspects of the process. From week to week, you do a lot of the same things over and over, but at least each day is different from the last. There is a lot of variety in what you do.

If I were starting out in a larger brewery, I would probably be assigned one particular task: cleaning or filling kegs, running the beer filter or bottling line, etc. If I had to do the same thing every day, I’m sure it would get monotonous after a short amount of time. Like anything, I’d have to “put in my time” before being given more responsibility.

So where do I go from here? Well, it’s week-to-week. I can’t go down to Charleston next week, so I’ll have to see if I’ll be able to make it down in the coming weeks. I have some other things going on in life, so there’s no way for me to know. I am very thankful to David and Jaime for allowing into their livelihood, and I hope I can make it down at least a time or two more before the clock strikes midnight.

All I know is, nothing over the last two weeks has discouraged me. If anything, I’m fired up to keep going. As a matter of fact, I’ll be brewing up 10 gallons of Untamed IPA this weekend. It’s a far cry from the 300 gallons I helped brew Tuesday, but with some new found knowledge, this could be my best brew yet.

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, or if you’ve known me personally for more than 15 minutes, you probably know that I’ve been homebrewing for about two and a half years, and I’ve had thoughts of going pro at some point in my life. I never really pursued it seriously, most likely because I figured that, like many hobbies, if you did it day in and day out, it would lose its luster and become “work” like anything else.

I finally decided to do something about it and test this theory. About two months ago, I contacted Jaime at Coast Brewing Company and asked if they could use a hand. I got to know David (the brewmaster) and Jaime (his wife and co-owner) about two years ago when they first opened the brewery in Charleston.

We were at their grand opening celebration in October 2007. (To show you how much of a noob I was at the time, if you read that post, you might notice in my descriptions that I got the Kolsch and Hop Art mixed up. Doh! Humble beginnings…)

How In the World Did You Get This Job?

I approached Coast with my suggestion because I felt we had a good relationship, they know I love beer, I think they are cool people, they are still small enough to where even an inexperienced hand could be very helpful, and most importantly, I really respect and enjoy their beer. David is one of the most talented and imaginative brewers that I’ve come across, and to have the chance to learn under him would be an unbelievable opportunity. Even if it was just for a short time.

So, for a reason which may forever remain a mystery, Jaime and David agreed to let me drive 200 miles to spend a couple days a week with them. Maybe they figured if I was insane enough to commute three hours to come to work, I was serious about what I was doing. Or maybe it was my red beard. (And a special thanks to Phil, Eric and Lindy for letting me crash at their respective houses. I couldn’t do this without your help!)

My First Day

Monday morning I got up, lifted weights at Phil’s house and felt really good about the day. After having my traditional coffee and cereal for breakfast, I began my morning commute. After working at home for over a year now, I often forget about the frustrations of traffic. Dorchester Road in North Charleston was insane. It was a solid 2-lane artery of cars for as far as the eye could see. It took me roughly 30 minutes to travel 6.5 miles. I don’t know how people do that every day.

I got to the brewery around 9, ready to do whatever they had for me. Mondays are shipping days at Coast, so my first task was to help clean kegs and get them ready to be filled. The distributor usually arrives around noon to drop off empty kegs and to pick up their order for the week.

I first learned how to take apart and reassemble the opening of a keg. It’s often a good idea to open up and physically take a look inside a keg to make sure there is no dried or caked on beer stains. Often, these kegs are left outside, and especially in the summer, if there is anything left in the keg it can bake to the inside.

If a keg is pretty dirty, you can take a hose and a carboy brush and try to remove as much of the stains as possible before hooking it up to the keg washer. The washer puts the keg through a couple rinse cycles before a caustic acid wash to remove any residue or build up. Once that is complete, it is rinsed with a sanitizing solution, and CO2 is blown in to get everything out and fill the empty keg. At that point, they are ready to be filled with beer.

I also had the chance to fill a few kegs for the day’s shipment. I don’t know where those kegs were headed, but if you are having Coast Kolsch within the next week or two, there’s a chance I had a hand bringing it to you!

The distributor dropped off about twenty or thirty empty kegs, so after lunch I spent a couple hours cleaning those, getting a head start on next Monday’s shipment.

Around 3:00, after the kegs were finished, we set out to clean out a couple empty grundy tanks. These 7 barrel (a keg as we refer to it is a half-barrel) containers hold finished beer to be kegged or bottled at a later time. They are also on wheels, so they can be filled and moved into the large walk-in fridge for storage.

The cleaning process is pretty much the same for homebrewing as it is in a commercial brewery. You first use a base cleaner, such as Five Star PBW, to clean the inside of the tank. This is done by hooking up some large hoses to a couple of the orifices of the tank, pumping water inside and then circulating the water with the cleaning solution.

After cleaning with the base, the same process is used with an acid solution, such as Star San, to sanitize the tank. It’s always clean then sanitize with every piece of equipment that touches finished beer. It’s the same thing I do in my house, just with a lot bigger stuff.

Once we were done cleaning everything, it was time to unwind. The perks of the job are quite nice. Namely, that you’re in a brewery. It was a rigorous day, but not too tiring. I still had enough energy left by the end of the day for a little Rock Band with Red and Lindy. Rock on, Mississippi Swamp Gator!

Tuesday

Tuesday was more of a learning day for me than Monday. Our goal for today was to filter 15 barrels of Kolsch. My first task was to set up the filtration system. It consists of about 20 filter pads sandwiched in between plastic plates. These plates have holes in two corners where the beer enters and exits. The rest of the plates have ridges in which the beer flows.

As the beer passes through the ridges, yeast and other particles that are in the beer as it flows in get caught by the filter pads. So as to not filter out any additional flavors and color, Coast uses a fairly open filter pad since they are primarily targeting yeast.

Once the filtration system was cleaned and sanitized, it took about four hours to run all the beer through and into the two grundy tanks that we cleaned out the day before. I was able to sample the beer pre-filter and post-filter, and while the beer coming out was certainly clear as a bell, the beer going in (which was slightly cloudy from the yeast still suspended) was noticeably distinct and in my opinion, a little tastier. It was slightly more fruity and bitter than the filtered beer.

As I learned from David, filtering is one of the riskiest processes in commercial brewing. Any time you move beer or expose it to the elements, you run the risk of contamination. Even though the filtration system is fairly closed and we sanitized everything thoroughly, there is the risk of the filter getting stuck if too much sediment accumulates. Luckily, it went smooth as silk for us, but a stuck filter is a serious pain and is difficult to fix.

Why filter, then? Well, in this case, it’s all about appearances, unfortunately. A kolsch style of beer is expected to be clear and golden, much like the standard lager that dominates the marketplace. In order for the kolsch to sell, it has to be clear. It’s one of the unfortunate consequences of being a commercial brewery. If I were doing this in my house, it wouldn’t matter, but when you have sales to make, sometimes you have to do things that are not ideal.

The filtration process took about four hours, and in the downtime we cleaned out the hot liquor tank. That process involved circulating a hot acid solution in the tank for about 30 minutes to remove any mineral deposits that can accumulate from the water supply.

Once we finished filtration and cleaned all that up, we cleaned out the tank that the unfiltered beer was in. I nearly killed myself sticking my head inside the tank as it was filled with CO2 from the cleaning process. Not a good idea, since we don’t breathe CO2 very well. Kind of like sticking your head under water. Other than that, I’m no worse for wear!

Lessons Learned

Perhaps the most apparent lesson I learned in two days in a small commercial brewery is that brewing commercially is not that much different than homebrewing. Beer is beer. Most of the time in a commercial brewery is spent cleaning and sanitizing, much like it is at home.

At Coast, for instance, they only brew one day a week for the most part. Occasionally they’ll brew twice in a week. The rest of the time is spent cleaning stuff, moving beer around, preparing shipments and doing general maintenance. It’s not glorious work, and that’s why a lot of beginning homebrewers don’t stick with it. Once they learn that brewing is a lot more work than just brewing, it becomes a lot less attractive. You have to love it, or you won’t put in the effort.

The biggest difference is obviously the size and complexity of the equipment. At home, I don’t have to worry about glycol cooling systems, CO2 regulators, industrial water pumps, or steam-heating 400 gallons of water. There are a lot of parts and pieces, and it takes a pretty mechanically inclined person to maintain, let alone understand, all those systems.

That’s when my head would start to spin. From my homebrewing experience, I have a pretty good handle on the beer part of it. However, I have very little mechanical experience, so that’s where I have the most to learn.

Final Thoughts From My First Two Days

I loved it. I had an absolute blast. David was a great teacher and I learned a ton. He always stayed patient when he had to explain things several times, and he kept his sense of humor, like when I was about to disconnect the hose from the hot liquor tank from the wrong side of the valve.

What was also so cool about the experience was how the brewery is truly a “results-oriented work environment.” No one cares what you look like, what you talk like or what you do. It’s all about getting the job done. Does the beer get made and does it leave the brewery on-time and in good condition? It’s very refreshing, especially since we live in a world that judges by appearance and words, not as much by action.

You never know whether a hobby can become a job, or if something you enjoy will become a chore when you do it every day for an extended period of time. That being said, I could see myself in this environment and really enjoying it. Coming from 10 years of work behind a desk, it was exhilarating to be physically involved in my work, to have my hands on something tangible.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen for me from here, but all I know is that I’m looking forward to next week. I’ll be back down there Monday and Tuesday to report for duty. I’m hoping Tuesday will be a brew day. Flippin’ sweet!