Sunday 17 January 2010

Fingers crossed

Sometime soon I'll be shutting down the old brewhouse and building a new one in its place. This will take a certain number of days to complete, during which time we'll not be producing any beer. Therefore, in order to keep the beer (and the money) flowing we need to build up sufficient stock to see us through. The sums go like this:

I need 100 barrels (3600 gallons) of beer to shut down and we brew 5 barrels (180 gallons) per batch. I have 10 brewing days available. Therefore we're brewing twice a day, every day, for the next two weeks.

Clive and I have practised double brewing sometime ago and it's perfectly possible, though extremely hard work, with the current brewhouse (this brewhouse is nearly 30 years old and has never worked this much in its career). There is one over-riding necessity however: it must work like clockwork with no slip-ups or breakdowns, stock shortages or power failures, sicknesses or hangovers.

We can do it alright, but whether we do do it or not is now up to the gods.

2 comments:

Mark said...

I'm off on holiday, other wise I'd have offered to come and give you a hand shovelling and scrubbing. I'm sure there are basic jobs you could pass over to an extra pair of hands.

The experience of working at a commercial brewery would be excellent!

Hope you pull it off.

Chunk

Richard Eastcliff said...

Jolly good luck with that. I would offer to help, but I couldn't possibly be seen with callouses on my lily white hands at the next awards bash.

Visited a very popular little brewery when I was in Oz recently, which seems to be enjoying similar success to yourself. Their dark 'un was superb, and it made a refreshing change to all the talk about bloomin' wine! Anyway, more power to your (and consequently our) elbows!