This is the second brewery I was sent out to. We spend the whole day at the breweries we are assigned to and do whatever brewery work they want us to.

Front of the brewery

This is a 10 barrel brewery. That’s 10 UK barrels. 1 UK barrel is equal to 43.23 US gallons. A US 10 barrel system is 310 US gallons and a 10 barrel UK system is 422.3 US gallons. There are 112 more US gallons in this 10 barrel system. The brewer had us helping him as he brewed.

The front of the pub at Sonnet 43

We got there as the grain was being dumped into the hopper to ride up the auger and as it exits the auger, it  blends with hot water and drops into the mash tun. I have not seen a mill yet. The bags of grain come milled.

Malt goes into the hopper and up the elevator into the mash tun

Malt and hot water are blended into a porridge like concoction

Click Me to enlarge

5 Kilos of Styrian Bobek hops. I was handed a vacuum sealed 5K bag and asked to break it up and put it in this bag

The hops on the right were placed in this used grain bag. I showed this to give some reference to the quantity of hops

Hop resin from breaking up the 5K of hops

We cleaned out the mash tun and when the boil was over, we were tasked with cleaning the copper. It is a gas fired copper with a large square coil of tubes that communicate the heat to the wort.

Inside the copper with after the wort has been moved to a fermenter. Lots of spent hops

Inside the copper. This was taken as it was filling with wort from the mash tun, but you can easily see the 4 inch heating tubing

My partner for the day Hanmoi inside the copper to give it the once over

A job well done

Here is an interesting cooling device that I have seen in lots of places in the UK. It is a refrigerator that cools a quantity of water to a sub freezing temperature. There are ‘things’ that you stick in the water and can pump a beer or water through and you can use it to cool beer or cool a vessel.

Cooling device

These ‘Cards’ (for lack of the proper term) are placed in the refrigerated water and pumped in lines to whatever you want to cool.

The tubes from the ‘card’ are attached with these very popular one click connectors, called John Guest Connectors in the UK

Some of them have pumps in them or you can put the pump in the reservoir of water to push the water through.

I’ve beer pretty good about converting my thinking into metric. I like the metric system. It is easier. But come on! the first wrench, I mean spanner,  I pick up at he brewery, is not in Metric!

You’re killin me!