Time out for a cuppa during the move. Which cup is the Head Brewer's? Mmm...
Pretty FVs all in a row!Apologies to all for not being busy blogging recently, been kept busy in the planning and moving of all the brewery tanks and vessels from the existing brewery to our new site.
On Thursday last we even managed to move 2 fermenters : 30 barrel FV1 and 10 barrel FV5. Quite an exhausting and tense time for us as FV1 is quite a tall cylindro-conical vessel and had to be very carefully lowered down on to its side for loading on to the flatbed transporter. The lowering operation took 2 hours, whereas the drive 400 metres away took 4 minutes followed by 2 minutes of lifting upright and dropping into position! FV5 by comparison (the small black-clad tank on the right of the FV photo) is quite a short squat dish-bottomed tank which was simply forklifted upright onto the lorry....
This means we have now 160 barrels of fermentation capacity in the new site - which is the eqivalent of 46,080 pints. We still have to move two 20 bbl FVs yet, once we've moved the beer (Thrappledouser and Independence) out of them to the Conditioning Tanks before racking into casks. The CTs (as we call them) will be moved as soon as they are all emptied.
Whilst all this excitement goes on, we're putting the finishing touches to the new brewhouse, sorting out the electrics, cooling systems and giving the pumps and valves and pipework installations a thorough washing and cleaning to make sure everything is going just right before we finish up on the old brewhouse and make the break for the new one.
Tha sinn dochas gum bithidh a h-uile rud ceart gu leor agus gun toisichidh sinn san taigh-gruide againn ur a dh'aithghearr!
We hope that all will be well and that we'll start in our new brewery soon! Slàinte, Ken
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