Strawn sounds familiar
Yet again I have abandoned this thread. Things have been very busy 70+ hour work weeks for the past 3 months. I produced nearly 20,000 pints last week alone. Augusta has proven a very fertile market for us.
I tried to post a video, but can't seem to remember how to upload it.
Things are going well. I have produced nearly 250,000 pints this year.
@ Dog House Brew- While the agitator and mash plow are useful, the mashtun still requires more manual labor to clean than a batch of homebrew lol. We shuttle out nearly 2000 pounds of wet grain every brew. The screens to my false bottom are welded together making cleaning underneath very difficult.
I just brought our canning line online today. We will have beer in cans tomorrow. You want to talk about a bottle filler upgrade. I went from 1 a minute with the counter pressure filler to 24 cans a minute. It has a ton of moving parts and the measurements for some of the sections of the cans seal are +-.002"
But it is amazing to watch the machine in action. I have been training assistant brewers lately, the packaging line is my newest project.
I just got 160,000 cans in soooo...
There is much I can talk about. I have many logistical and financial complaints. To get anything done right in a brewery my size, expect to spend 10-100k depending on the project. My opinions on initial investments have changed quite a bit as well. If you want to start a brewery of a scale similar to mine expect to spend a minimum of $1,000,000. (Not including a packaging line!)
We will be statewide (including Athens and Atlanta) by the end of the summer. Keep an eye out for the cans.
Consistency has been extremely difficult. Not because of my lack of documentation or procedures (though, I do feel my recipes always need improvement), but simply because there is so many moving parts and it doesn't always go according to plan. Things break. I ask that any beer snob or nitpicky homebrewer take a moment to consider the cost of accomplishing even the smallest task. Consider the sheer amount of machinery that must work to produce a perfect brew. If a single spray ball isnt spraying fully or if one of hundreds of O-rings arent soaked correctly an entire batch can be affected. I am constantly striving for improvement, but we are a start up brewery on a budget. I do the best I can with what I have.
My first brewday was the most difficult shift I ever worked. Stuck mash and first time using a steam boiler resulted in a 21 hour brewday. But talk about a trial by fire. From that point forward it was no longer a hobby, I am now a professional brewer.
I would love to answer any questions anyone has on here, or you can email me for a faster response @
[email protected]
Oh, and:
http://www.craftbeer.com/brewers_banter/whos-the-youngest-head-brewer-in-the-country