Saint Arnold Brewhouse Blog

I spent a while unloading dirty kegs the other day. It's really just forklift time for the most part, but since they arrive in large quantities we stack them high. For the half barrel kegs, it's no big deal since they arrive in pallets of eight and are quite stable. But our sixth-barrel kegs are a different story. They arrive in pallets of twenty. They tend to be loosely packed and poorly contained. They are constantly trying to fall off the pallets. They weigh fourteen pounds empty, so maybe 280 or pounds per pallet.
So my challenge is to stack them (after getting them off the truck) and of course, keep the half barrels wiith the half barrels and the sixths with the sixths. So I ended up with a rather spectacular (and scary) six pallet stack*...Jenga!
*One thousand six hundred and eighty pounds worth!

Posted by Bev at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nothing says "organization" like a uniform. However, we're just not that picky at the brewery. If you've spent any time on the Brewcams, you likely have noted that while we usually wear some type of Saint Arnold shirt at the "office," sometimes there's a random brewery t-shirt or (gasp!) a shirt with NO relationship to brewing at all!
But all of that changed yesterday with the arrival of new Saint Arnold work shirts. Suddenly, we looked like we meant business! Of course, we can't really do anything without keeping SOME levity in the mix. Nobody put their real name on on the shirts, so trying to figure out who's who by checking the name on the shirt won't work! Think you can match the nickname to the brewery employee? Give it a try... There's Scooter, Mr. Wright, Mr. Foogerson, Moonpie, Glass Wrangler and Coffee Filtration. If you don't like those names, wait until the next workday, since nobody put the same name on every shirt! Of course, I was supposed to have MY name on my work shirt, which was the original. Then again, if you don't know who I am, you must not know Saint Arnold all that well!

Posted by Bev at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Owing to a problem (now corrected) with our reverse osmosis system this morning, we ended up having a "slow day" today. Of course "slow" is a relative term... we still had a massive bottling run, kegs to clean, bright tanks to prepare for filtering and other fun tasks. I made it my job to venture into the rafters of the brewery to clean the tops of several tanks. (Winter is clearly the best time of year to do this...) Saints Patrick, Sambomeister, Idesbald, Gall and Dorothy all got scrubbed down with stunning results. The problem is that over time they get dusty and the dust traps condenstion on top of the tank making it perfect for mildew. Cleaning them isn't hard, just time consuming, dirty and a little bit unnerving. Properly secured, you don't have to worry about falling to your death, but there's not a lot of room to stand!
Naturally, all that grime ends up on the floor, making this task one to be avoided on Fridays, when we are trying to clean the place up for Saturday's tour, so no telling when I (or someone else) will get to the rest of the tanks!

Posted by Bev at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)