Despite everything I’ve been learning at the brewery I constantly want to know more. Fortunately, the brewery I work in consists of three people: the head brewer, an assistant brewer and myself. This small crew provides me with many opportunities to not only flood my mind with beer knowledge, but also get my hands into many of the daily brewing operations.

I currently work six days a week. Although I spend three great days in the brewery, the other three days are spent waiting tables. In all honesty, being a waiter is the pits. However, it pays the bills.

Lately I’ve found some of my brewery hours getting cut in order to work more in the restaurant—the brewery is part of a brewpub, so we have a full restaurant and my two jobs are thankfully located in the same building.

Initially I was bummed, since I viewed this as stepping backwards from my ultimate goal of full time brewing. However, I spent one of these forced days off visiting another local brewery and checking out the operations there.

A friend of mine starting interning at a brewery in Brooklyn around the same time I started my tenure at Chelsea. On my day off I hopped the train over to his neck of the woods and had the chance to see the inner workings of another commercial operation. My initial reaction was to the size of this brewery. It dwarfs the facility in Chelsea and produces about 5 times as much brew. Also, the brewery had 8 full time employees and 2 interns.

Although my buddy is now full time, like most people, he started as an intern. Most interns start as the brewery monkey, shlepping around pallets and cleaning kegs. While this is essential to any brewing operation, it also takes the least amount of time to learn. I’m not saying that keg cleaning isn’t important, but when it comes to the mindset of brewery interns, it’s only the first few backbreaking steps down a long road of brewing knowledge.

As he showed me around the space I got curious and began asking a lot of questions about their procedures. Since I now possess a pseudo-working knowledge of a brewery, I started contemplating how the practices at Chelsea were different from the way things were done here. After a few minutes of questioning my pal conceded that he wasn’t sure about most of the procedural activity since he didn’t get many chances to take part in the actual brewing. Most of his time, he said, was spent on the other side of the brewery cleaning and filling kegs and directing transfers.

As I sat on the train home I realized how often I’m able to get my hands in many of the essential brewing activities. While I definitely clean my fair share of kegs and spend a great amount of time completing the less desirable tasks at Chelsea, I’m also allowed to take part in the actual brewing and many other aspects of life in the brew house.

Working in a small brewery—like working for any small operation or company—definitely has its setbacks, but the rewards outweigh these issues by far. Although I may be forced to wait a few extra days for my paycheck, or the beer I make isn’t as readily available as bigger breweries, I have the opportunity to get my hands dirty and actually learn the craft. Despite the little inconveniences, the hops stuck underneath my fingernails and the wort that sticks to my boots is a true testament to the value of learning by doing. Besides, how many other people get to pour themselves a pint in the middle of their workday?

Recently we brewed our second wet hop beer of the year with about 50-pounds of Cascades from the Yakima Valley. Our head brewer had the day off so I was brought in the brewery to assist with the brew day. I decided that within 6-months I want to be able to run a brewday completely solo so I decided to take the opportunity to sketch out some diagrams and take detailed notes to help me remember some of the more minute details of the process. Since there were only two of us working that day, I didn’t have to surrender my services to deliveries. This meant not only that I could focus all of my energy on brewing—loading and unloading kegs around NYC gets very physically draining—and even had some spare time to take a few photos.

Mashing In:

Here is 1400-pounds of malt doing its magic. For this fresh hop we decided to go for a dark amber color and even added 165-pounds of flaked Rye for a bit of spicyness.

Vorlof:

The purpose of the vorlof, or recirculation, is to clarify the wort. The hot wort is cycled through itself while the bed of spent grain acts as a filter bed collecting husks and other haze causing goodies.

Bag of Cascades:

10-pounds of fresh Cascades hops waiting their turn in the boil.

Fresh Hops:

After the boil, we flush the wort through a hopback full of whole leaf hops to retain all the wonderful aromas, flavors and essential oils the cones have to offer. Normally, we’ll use between five and ten pounds of dried, whole leaf hops for a 30-barrel batch. However, since we were using fresh hops, we decided it’d be much better to utilize 30-pounds of fresh Cascades for this.

In about 3 weeks I’ll have some information—and a few more photos—of the finished and hopefully delicious brew!

More and more I find myself enamored with the smell of hops. Now, I’m no hophead, but there is something about dumping Amarillo pellets into the brew kettle or manning the hop back that really gets to me. Although I may go for a malty porter more often than a sharp IPA, the utilization of hops while brewing has really got my mind—and palate—intrigued.

As I’ve learned more in the brewery, I’ve discovered that I’m relaxing a bit and really starting to enjoy the work. I feel that a lot of this stems from being able to take everything in since I’m no longer stress over little things. For example, where I used to worry that I incorrectly weighed out the wrong amount of hops, I now just stand back and watch the bitter green cones saturate with sticky-sweet wort and just enjoy the experience. I’ve noticed that my not sweating the small stuff, I’m also finding many new aspects of beer that I enjoy, like hops.

My best hop experience actually occurred a few weeks ago. One Tuesday morning our head brewer showed up to work with 56-pounds of fresh Chinook hops divided among four large sacks. While the look of the greenery was impressive the smell was what floored me. Now, pelletized hops come to us in 11-pound boxes and posses a pungent and sharp aroma. The 200-pound sacks of dried hops are overwhelming in size but mellow in scent.

These wet hops, however, had such a clean and grassy smell that I couldn’t help but grab a handful and bring the whole glorious bundle up to my nose. The bitterness was apparent, but it was so clean that I had to keep checking to make sure I wouldn’t forget that scent. Fortunately, the fresh hop beer we brewed that day was done conditioning two days ago and I can experience those fresh hops all over again.

I meant to write this piece about the more technical aspects that hops play in beer, but like I said earlier, it’s often more rewarding to stop sweating the details and just enjoy the experience.

Beer is made from four basic ingredients: Barley, water, hops and yeast. The basic idea is to extract the sugars from grains (usually barley) so that the yeast can eat it up and spit out alcohol and CO2 thus making beer.

The brewing process starts with grains, usually barley (although sometimes wheat, rye or other such things.) The grain is harvested and processed. This is done by heating, drying out and cracking the grain. The main goal of malting the grains to isolate the enzymes wanted by brewers so that it’s ready for mashing.

The grains then go through a process know as mashing, in which they are steeped in hot, but not boiling, water for about an hour, sort of like you were making tea. This activates enzymes in the grains which causes it to begin to break down and release the sugar inside of it. Once this is accomplished you drain the hot water from the mash that’s full of the sugar from the grains. You’ve now got a hot, sticky sweet liquid called wort which is basically unmade beer, sort of like dough is unmade bread.

The wort is boiled for about an hour during which time hops are added at various points.
What are hops? Hops are the small, green cone-like fruit of a vine plant. They provide bitterness to balance out all the sugar in the wort and provide flavor. They also act as a natural preservative, which is what they were first used for. (For more info on hops take a look at our article on the subject.)


Once the hour long boil is up the wort is cooled, strained and filtered. It’s then put in a sealed container and yeast is added to it. The brewing is now complete and fermentation begins. The beer is then stored for a couple of weeks at room temperature (in the case of ales) or many many weeks at cold temperatures (in the case of lagers) while the yeast works its fermentation magic. Basically the yeast eats up all that sugar from the grains that’s in the wort and spits out CO2 and alcohol as waste products. (For more info on the difference between ales and lagers check our article here.)

You’ve now got alcoholic beer, however it is still flat and uncarbonated. The flat beer is bottled, at which time it is either artificially carbonated like a soda, or if it’s going to be ‘bottle conditioned’ it’s allowed to naturally carbonate via the CO2 the yeast produces. After allowing it to age for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months you drink the beer, and it’s delicious!

Budweiser has recently launched a major ad campaign centered around Bud Light’s unique ability to be placed in your mouth and swallowed, or as they refer to it, “drinkability.”

This is apparently something that sets Bud Light apart from other drinks. Really Budweiser? Let’s take a look at one of those ads.

I have to agree with Budweiser on a few points. Something is generally easier to drink when it’s not being sprayed at you from a hose at full blast, or not hot sauce, or not hail (which as a solid and not a liquid is in fact impossible to drink.) Last time I checked however none of the other light beers out there were any of these things, they were in fact beer, and generally served in glasses. So unless there’s some brewing company I don’t know about making a hail and Tabasco flavored beer that’s sprayed at you from a hose, I’m not sure if Budweiser is really making much of a claim for Bud Light.