The countdown to Xmas has begun and there are more goodies in Santa's sack...

We're all very excited at the brewery because we're going to get some lovely Xmas gifts from Santa. Three new dual-purpose 30 bbl fermenting and conditioning tanks are in the middle of manufacture.

They are almost ready for the lorry, with only minor finishing touches to do. Stainless steel comes from the steel mill with a protective peel-off grey plastic coating, which remains on during the welding and bending processes. Once the tanks have been transported here, unloaded off the lorry, uprighted and put into position on the brewery floor, the plastic coating is peeled off to reveal the shiny stainless finish. Great fun - it's a bit like popping the bubbles in bubble-wrap  - once you start, you can't stop! And then the real excitement comes when we fill them with beer. Can't wait.

 

Hope you all have a relaxing and enjoyable lead-up to the Xmas period. I'll be looking forward to a few pints of our scrumptious Santa's Swallie, ask for it in a pub near you...

Slàinte!
Ken 

How to help the environment and decrease your carbon footprint by installing Solar PV Panels.

In these carbon-conscious times we've been thinking good and hard about our energy usage. Even though we're in Scotland where a high proportion of electricity comes from hydro schemes, we felt it would be a very sensible environmental decision to put solar panels on to our roof, as this will help our overall usage of electricity and furthermore contribute to the national grid.

 

Three weeks ago the scaffolders arrived and in a day had erected this multi-coloured framework mainly around the western side of the building to allow the electricians to install the solar panels on the roof. They did pick a very wet day to put the scaffolding up as you can see from the sheen of rain on the tarmac.

This is the view on the roof looking North, with the brew kettle chimney stack in the upper right of the picture. So now you know what a Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Panel looks like. For a more detailed guide on Solar PV click here.

Here is Michael the electrician, hiding behind the platform on the cherrypicker, commissioning the inverters - the 2 black and blue panels fixed to the wall above the malt intake hopper. Inverters turn the Direct Current (like in a torch battery) into Alternating Current as in your 2-phase 240v domestic supply, though at the brewery we have the added complication of having a 3-phase 415v supply, which is much more efficient at running our types of big pumps and refrigeration equipment. The power from the PV panels comes down through the roof along the black cables into the seven black and grey isolator switchboxes then into the inverters, from where it goes into our distribution board. We had to switch off all the electricity into the brewery for a few hours for the connecting up of the PV power to our distribution board (all the grey/white panels on the right of the photo)  which did involve a 'Throw the Switch, Igor' moment, when the main power line was cut off. And much more excitingly, when the power was switched back on again!

 

'Throw the switch, Igor!'

 

The cardboard recycling lorry, which comes by us on Thursday had a bumper load as every component came in a little box. In fact we recycled all of the wrapping, cardboard and pallets that the installation came with, to help with the holistic green approach we've taken with this project.

One thing I was very pleased with, despite the fact that the commissioning of the PV panels took place on a cold dank rainy day, was that the system managed to generate 4 kW in about half an hour after it was switched on before the dusk made it too dark for any power generation.

 

Our new sun-o-meter

Every day we're hoping for sun and its light, as that's what makes this work to harness the sun's energy to help our environment for the present and for the future, as I want people to be able to enjoy our (now greener) beer far into the future as well.

Slàinte,

Ken

All new shiny stuff - can a brewery ever get any more exciting than this?

Been a while since I posted anything - so much been going on over the summer together with my lack of modern computer skills ( ie my old laptop at home where this blog is put together getting outdated with operating system and browser and me being unable to fix it - until now that is).

Been doing a bit of hill walking, contemplating the craft beer scene

There have been quite a few changes at the brewery - new people, new systems, new kit, new van and even a new kettle. A new toaster would be nice but we'll have to wait a bit for that. The underlying theme of all this change isn't in fact change for its own sake but it's more of an emphasis on quality and the delivery of great tasting beer, because, what really matters for me and all of us in the brewery is this - great tasting beer.

There has been a lot of talk over the past year and even more attitudes of all kinds in the press and blogosphere about craft beer, crafty beer, craft vs. keg, craft vs. real ale and micro vs macro. My idea is quite a simple view - is it beer I can be proud of and proud to tell the world about. Everyone has a different spin on craft beer and this one is mine. I has taken me years to learn my craft and I'm still learning. I still want to brew better beer and to brew beer better.

One way of doing this is to have better equipment, so over the last 6 months we've been investing in new kit in the brewery, beginning with the keg machine. This keg cleaner/filler arrived one dreich Saturday morning in April all the way from the manufacturer Comac in Bergamo, near Milan. It's very near where San Pellegrino water (my personal favourite) comes from, and if you know anything about grand opera, it's the town where the composer Donizetti was from.The driver was Bulgarian and spoke no English, let alone Scots, so it was back to my 6th form Russian O-level to dredge up enough Russian to use as a common tongue to unload the kegger safely.

My first day in Scotland - I hope they unwrap me soon

Now the kegger has been installed (after agonising where to place it), it looks great, but much more importantly puts our great tasting beer into kegs much better and safer than we could do it manually. We have been racking our craft beer into kegs for Sweden, USA, Malaysia, Finland and Norway for several years now, but it meant degassing the keg (a pressure vessel), taking out the keg extractor tube or spear. This has to done very carefully after ensuring the keg is completely degassed and contains no pressure as even a very low pressure over atmospheric pressure can cause the spear to fly out of the keg and cause a serious injury. A special key is needed to open up a keg to prevent this happening by un-trained personnel. After this, cleaning and sterilising the keg and spear then refitting, gassing up and filling very slowly to minimise fobbing losses. Four days work for four people to fill 100 kegs, whereas the kegger can clean and fill 100 kegs safely in less than four hours, allowing us to enjoy the fruits of our labours even more!

The left hand side is the cleaning and sterilising head and the right hand side is the filling side. The machine has various cycles it can go through depending what we want done, whether cleaning or cleaning, sterilising and pressurising only (for filling the next day for example) or going through the whole regime of cleaning, sterilising, pressuring and filling right there and then. Comac were very understanding of our requirements and delivered an excellent machine which has already filled since commissioning at the end of April this year over 1500 kegs. 

The kegger needs various services - steam for heating the caustic detergent tank, air pressure for actuating the rams and valves, electricity for powering the PLC (process logic controller) and sensor systems - pressure/flowrate/temperature/fill levels/liquid, CO2 for pressurising kegs, water for rinsing and tank filling.Not least, a drain for de-ullaging or draining out the dregs and rinsings. So plenty of effort was devoted to installing these in March and April.

The service end of the kegger

New steam pipe from the boiler

 We also commissioned a new type of air compressor - a rotary screw compressor, which is so quiet (unlike the reciprocal action compressors of old) that we hardly know if it is on. This delivers the service air at 6 bar to the kegger and to various other bits and pieces in the brewery, more of which later...

We've been using the kegger to fill not only chilled and filtered beer into kegs, but also real ale, unfiltered but treated with isinglass finings to allow the yeast to settle quickly to the bottom of the keg where it sits below the bottom of the extractor tube. We do this by mixing the rough beer with isinglass in a 5 bbl conditioning tank, then pumping it to fill through the kegger. The various pressure and flowrate settings on the kegger we can alter to allow the low level of  carbonation within the keg to stay within our specifications for the ideal conditioning for real ale. In the pub, these kegs are connected to a handpull, which draws the beer from the keg without any external CO2 gas pressure going into the keg as the gas vent on the beerline to keg coupler is open to the atmosphere, which lets air into the keg as the beer is drawn out.

A lovely system and these kegger-filled real ale kegs are being used in over 40 pubs for our beautiful beers. Just thinking about it makes we want to pop out for a pint now, so I'll sign off now and carry on after some 'refreshment'. How about a pint of Thrappledouser?

 

Cheers the noo & Slàinte, Ken

Brewing and tasting continues apace with new developments in brewland

It's been quite a month what with one thing or another. Putting a new shower in at home, getting the new conditioning tanks into operation with cooling pipework in copper, but soon to be insulated, running the glycol coolant around them and topping up the big glycol tank, commissioning the upgraded and shiny white refrigeration compressor, fitting sight-tubes to all the conditioning tanks (not just the new ones),  brewing plenty of Tighthead to keep the thirsty folk in pubs happy during the Six Nations Rugby. Even managed to watch the Irish game at Murrayfield, the day after hosting at the brewery some great Irish brewers (and rugby fans). Planning for our new keg cleaner/racker which Fergus and I saw in Bergamo, Italy, for a hasty but essential pre-delivery inspection. Welcoming a new member of the brewery team, young Andrew who will be improving his brewhouse skills at the mashtun and copper. Not to mention enjoying the brief sunny week in early March before the snow came back with a vengeance...and getting out and about to some pubs for some professional sampling.

  

CT1 with it's rather simple but effective pushfit sight tubes. The bit that sticks out to the right is a pressure relief valve, to stop the tank imploding should beer be pumped out quickly without the CIP (the black and red handled one below) valve being open.

Our new refrigeration compressor with its copper pipework still to be lagged at the back.

What it looks like on the inside. It's just a fancy fridge except without the food or drink. The compressor is the black bit on the lower left and the white cylinder is the gas expansion tank. Fridges work by compressing a gas into liquid and then allowing the liquid to evaporate back to gas which brings a drop in temperature, just like droplets of sweat on one's brow evaporating in the breeze, bringing a drop in temperature.

The pressure gauge of the glycol coolant within the system

The old shower cubicle at home after I'd gone mad with a sledgehammer. I kept the copper pipework for the new fittings. 

All shiny and new. Note to self - must get shower door

The February sun shining bright on St. Matthew's Church Spire - the view from the back of my flat

          

Oh such beauty! Sunburst in all its glory.

A happy and contented man...in the Ericht Alehouse. Top pub.Go there. Enjoy.

Slàinte, Ken

Santa came through with the goodies!

I know it's been a while since Christmas and the festive season, but we've been hard at it in the brewery with plenty of beer going out in lots of different tankers, casks, kegs and bottles. I took a few days off over Hogmanay and had a lovely time in the Black Isle with the Lady Arlene and her family. Hogmanay itself was very pleasant indeed with a visit to the pictures in Eden Court, Inverness, to see Life of Pi (2D) - an excellent interpretation of the best-selling book - followed by great grub and grog at the Castle Tavern featuring our thirst-quenching Thrappledouser and the hearty and robust Lia Fail. Then over the River Ness to a crackin' outside concert with the Treacherous Orchestra, Big Country and Skerryvore. We snuck off to see the bells in at our lodgings for the night before a glowing fire and some fine uisge beatha.

Above you can see my personal haul of beer-related Xmas goodies. Garret Oliver's wonderfully informative Brewmaster's Table  - fascinating reading with some inspiring food and beer ideas. He's an interesting and interested writer with a superb turn of phrase and throws a good deal of light on to the American brewing story. From early spruce beers through Washington, Jefferson and the 19th century pre-eminence of Brooklyn as a brewing town (a good water supply being paramount), continuing on through Prohibition - such a sadness - and up to the present day. A lovely and worthwhile treasure.

My sister Fiona, who lives by Helston in Cornwall, sent up the beautiful print of Spingo Christmas Cracker from  Helston's Blue Anchor Pub Brewery. A frame is being sought as I write and a space found on the wall in the sitting-room. A fine accompaniment it shall be to the third of my beery gifts - a delightful limited edition ceramic relief from Fife artist Hilke Macintyre which proudly displays admiration and anticipation of the foaming brew. Thank you, Arlene.

Meanwhile, back on the brewery floor, more excitement ensues with the very recent addition of our three new 30 barrel triple-purpose vessels. Triple-purpose because they can be used for fermentation, conditioning and carbonating bright beer for kegging. They are dish-bottomed with the dish underneath, as we call the shape of the underside, exactly the same profile as the domed lid. The relatively flat centre of the dish, where the inlet/outlet lies, is ideal for letting the flocculating and sedimenting yeast and proteinaceous trub settle out, without dragging it all through to the casks, filter or kegs. Below is a shot of our very own Three Wise Men, Richard, Malc and Duncan, standing in front of  our new members of staff with their proper names - Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar - our Three Kings, each with his gift, but instead of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, we have Fermentation, Conditioning and Carbonating Pressure!

 

We've already filled Caspar, on the left, with Tighthead, our 4.2% amber ale ready for the Rugby World Cup. Looking forward to it and the rugby! Slàinte, Ken