I'm Hot, Sticky, Sweet...
The past two times we've made Root Beer, I've been the "lucky" man on the platform. It's a dirt-simple job, you fill the kettle with water, you "spin" it with the pump and start throwing in the sugar! It's ONLY 1900 pounds in a batch! I took advantage of the webcam the other day to make a movie of the process... (requires Apple's Quicktime)
When I did it earlier in the year, it was truly a "hot, sticky & sweet" situation, as I was coated in sugar, which melted with my sweat... Yuck! and I recorded the pile of sugar bags for posterity, which our webcam sadly missed.
Once we finish making the sugar water, then we blend it with our own special root beer flavorings (made especially for Saint Arnold) in a fermenter and then chill it back down before carbonating it. Then comes bottling day.. the ONE day when we can drink as much as we want, straight off the bottling line!