A few years ago, through a combination of luck, good timing, persistence, and plenty of beers and growlers, I got to know the brewing staff at a local brewpub, Harvest Moon Brewery & Cafe in New Brunswick, NJ. Fast forward to this summer, and I was able to spend the better part of a week there helping out the assistant brewer while the head brewer was away on vacation. For the record, I’ve already been able to volunteer for several brew days over the past couple of years but only for a single day here and there, never for a week. So, if I don’t sound appropriately excited and awed in this article, it’s only because I know a bit of the routine and rhythm which definitely involves a lot of cleaning and I’m used to being around the 10 barrel containers. Don’t get me wrong, though, it was incredibly exciting, just more as a learning experience than as a kid in a Willy Wonka factory type of thing! I have an idea that I’ve slowly been working on, to potentially open up a brewery in the Central NJ area in the next 5-10 years. It’s one of those ideas that I can tuck away and forget about when necessary, but always bring out of the closet whenever there is the time or energy for it. Who knows, maybe somebody will beat me to it by the time I’m ready, but in the meantime when opportunities like this present themselves, there’s a great justification behind it!

Originally I had planned to go through my entire experience in a timeline sort of order, but actually I think what will be more useful is to just pull out the interesting bits. I mean, how many of you want a detailed description of cleaning kegs or scrubbing serving tanks? You can click through the

Flickr gallery

or view it at the end to see some pictures!

BREWING COMMERCIALLY IS 90% CLEANING, 9% PLANNING, AND 1% BREWING

The first thing to know about brewing commercially is that everything is more or less planned out. There is a certain amount of flexibility in a brewer’s schedule, but there are also cycles that end up defining what’s going to happen on any given day. I think of it more as a target- or goal-based approach. “

Today, I need to get this done, because tomorrow this other thing is going to be ready to be done. If I don’t get it done today, then I’ll be rushing tomorrow or will have to stay late.

” Here are some examples of those goals or targets:

Brew a beer

Transfer yeast from one fermenter to another

Filter a beer from the fermenter into a serving tank

Clean a tap line

Keg off a serving tank to make room for the next beer

Each of these tasks has dozens of steps and things that need to be done in order to accomplish them. Cleaning is a huge part of every step in the process, because sanitation is one of the key factors in guaranteeing the success of a beer from its start on brew day all the way to its end when it gets served at the bar. Preparation is another big factor in achieving success - if you try to do everything in one day, on the fly as you go, you are likely to forget something or for something to go wrong. And that’s another major lesson I learned.

SOMETHING WILL GO WRONG

This is a cliche, a truism, whatever you want to call it. “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong” goes the saying. As we all know, this isn’t always true, but the fact of the matter is that you simply never know when something is going to go wrong, and the only thing you can do is be prepared so that you can minimize the effect of any one thing going wrong. This is especially important in a commercial brewery, where you are dealing with a large amount of beer. Whether you have the newest equipment or the oldest doesn’t matter, it will be just be different problems that come up. Harvest Moon uses a 10 barrel system, which is a very common size for brewpubs around the country. 10 barrels equals 310 gallons. Depending on the style of beer being brewed, they are probably putting anywhere from $500-$1000 of ingredients (grain, hops, yeast, water, any special additions) into a single batch of beer, and that beer has to go through a multi-week process while avoiding any contamination, all so that it can then be stored and served for another few weeks to months. During that process, the beer gets transferred through dozens of feet of metal pipes, brewing hoses, and devices (pumps, filters, etc.). If you start to think about it, the possibilities for issues becomes dizzying. And that’s where planning, preparation, and routine come in. Once you have that all down, you’ve eliminated the majority of potential issues, and you know how to deal with the issues that are likely to come up.

THE BREWING PROCESS

Mash In

OK, now let’s start with the fun part: brewing! As I mentioned earlier, this is probably about 1% of the time/effort involved in the process. On a typical brewday, such as the Tuesday I was there, the brewer shows up around 8:30am and mashes in. They can do this because everything has been prepped: the grains are in the hopper, water is already heated (that’s the bonus of having a 16 barrel hot liquor tank!), and all that’s needed is to push a few buttons, turn a few dials, and get the grains flowing into the mash tun. Actually, the reality for Harvest Moon is a little bit more difficult than that. First off, to hit the right mash temperature, they have to mix two streams of water: city water, which during the summer might be in the 70f-80f range, and water from the hot liquor tank which might be around 180f. There are no buttons to push or digital settings to set here. A good old fashioned knob controls the flow of city water into the hot liquor tank stream, and a thermometer a few inches down reads out the temperature. Setting the right temperature is a matter of touch and experience, because the thermometer does not adjust immediately to the change. But once the temperature is set around 168f, they can let the grains continue to flow in with no further action needed. During this time, it might be necessary to run down to the grain mill and add a few more bags of grain, since the hopper can only hold approximately 10 bags of grain, or ~550 pounds. Most recipes here call for 12-20 bags of grain!

Recirculate and Transfer

After the mash-in, an hour or more passes to extract all the sugars from the grains, and it’s time to get the wort into the boil kettle. But first, recirculation or vorlaughing is a necessary step to clarify the wort. Rotate a few in-line butterfly valves, making sure that the wort is going to flow to the correct outlet, and then turn on the pump and you’re done. Well, not quite! If you own or have ever used a pump-based brewing system (RIMS, HERMES) you know that it’s a delicate balance to get the valves and pump speed in the correct balance so that you are not transferring the wort too fast or too slow. Harvest Moon uses an open-air grant that allows the brewer to sample the wort, view its clarity, and also visually manage and balance the transfer speed. Once the wort is clear after about 10-15 minutes of recirculation, it’s time to pause the pump, switch a few more valves on and off, and get the wort into the brew kettle.

Once the brew kettle is about halfway full, a ball float switch triggers a sensor which initiates the heat. Harvest Moon uses a gas-fired kettle, and if the heat was turned on from the beginning, the wort would get scorched quickly. So according to the manufacturer’s recommendations and also based on the brewer’s experience, once there are about 7 barrels in the system, the heat can be turned on. That means that by the time the 13 barrels of wort are done being pumped from the mash tun to the boil kettle, the boil is just about to start. Recirculating and transferring the wort should probably take about an hour, but often can run over closer to 1.5 hours, and in the case of a bad transfer where the grain bed collapses or a line gets clogged, maybe even 2.

Boil

Now that the wort is transferred to the boil kettle and boiling, it’s time for everyone’s favorite part - adding the hops! Of course, the hop schedule has been determined long in advance, and all of the hops have been weighed out and put into buckets with their timing written on the side in marker. Now it’s just a matter of dumping the buckets in at the right time, which literally takes a few seconds for each addition. You might think this is a pretty boring time, just sitting there waiting around for an hour, and you’d be correct if that’s what actually happened. Instead, what really happens is that in this downtime you run downstairs to get something else prepped or cleaned, either for this brew or for another goal of the day. Now the problem becomes remembering to head upstairs to add the hops at the right time!

Whirlpool

Once the boil is done, you just chill it and transfer to the fermenter, right? Not yet, not yet. Although homebrewers don’t often end up using this technique, a whirlpool at the end of the boil allows all of the proteins, hops, and other particulates to gather together in the middle of the kettle, away from the transfer valve. This is also a prime time to add flavor and aroma hops, and I know a few advanced homebrewers who do this exact step. Also, the latest issue of Zymurgy had a great article about hopping and hop addition techniques, and there they mention that up to one-third of the total IBU’s of the resulting beer can be added at this time! Consider utilizing this step the next time you want to brew a hoppy beer.

Yeast Transfer

When you have 310 gallons of wort, you don’t simply open up the top of your fermenter and dump in a vial of yeast. Having a viable, active and large yeast slurry is critical to minimizing the lag time before fermentation starts. The brewers at Harvest Moon have told me that sometimes it can be as short as a few hours if the yeast is really fresh and active. You can achieve the same results at home with a yeast starter, although most homebrewers probably experience lag times of 12-24 hours without issue. There are several ways that yeast gets added: first, in a few cases, there is a fresh batch of yeast straight from the yeast supplier. This will get added to the conical fermenter prior to any transfer of wort. Yeast, however, often lasts for 10-20 generations with proper care, so more often than not there is already some yeast available from a previous brew. If the timing is correct, the yeast from another fermenter can be pumped into the fermenter being used for the day’s brew. Note that this requires the beer waiting in the other fermenter to have completed primary fermentation and conditioning. If ready, then that beer can be filtered into a serving tank and the yeast transferred to the fermenter ready for the day’s brew. This is an ideal situation for the health of the yeast, but requires a lot of planning to make it happen, as both brewing one beer and filtering another are tasks that require multiple hours each. In the cases where the timing is not right, yeast has been stored in 5 gallon buckets and put in the cooler. During that time, it will be “washed” once, and “fed” with sterile wort on a weekly basis to maintain its health. So, in one of these three ways, the yeast is now added to the fermenter prior to the wort being transferred in.

Chilling

How do you chill down 300+ gallons of recently boiled wort? The key is to not do it all at once. Just like the smaller plate chillers that advanced homebrewers use to chill the STREAM of wort passing through the chiller, Harvest Moon has a chiller system that involves plates, water and a rooftop glycol chiller. The city water circulates through the outside of the plates while the wort circulates through the inside. This might get the beer down to 80f-90f, but that’s not cold enough. The glycol is used to absorb the rest of the heat necessary to get the wort temperature down to 65f-75f.

Transfer

Now that the chiller has been turned on and all the dials and valves are in the correct position, the wort begins its journey down to the fermenter. A pipe runs from the brewhouse (on the first floor) down to the fermenter room in the basement. The pipe terminates about 6 feet up from the floor, and a brewing hose is hooked up to connect the transfer pipe to the bottom of the 10 barrel conical fermenter. You might think this is a gravity-based transfer, but because of the pressure needed to push the wort through the heat exchangers, a kettle pump is used to keep the wort moving.

The final step once the wort has been transferred into the fermenter is to set the temperature on the temperature control system. This works via a thin outer compartment or “jacket” that surrounds the fermenter. The rooftop glycol chiller feeds into this and circulates the super-chilled glycol around the outside of the fermenter until the temperature of the wort inside matches what is set on the dial outside.

So there you have it! I may write some more articles in the future about my experience brewing at Harvest Moon summer, but overall you have a pretty good summary of my time spent there and the lessons I learned. Every day that you come in, there are some goals or targets you are trying to achieve. The majority of your time is spent preparing for those goals and targets, or the next day's goals and targets. Most of the preparation comes in the form of cleaning, either straight up (removing physical matter from things with various cleaning agents and good old elbow grease) or sanitizing (getting rid of the germs via sanitizers, acids, or plain old 180f water). Once things are sanitized and a process is underway, such as brewing a batch of beer, there are plenty of things that can go wrong. Frequent monitoring via visual inspection or looking at gauges showing pressure, temperature, etc. helps give the brewer information on how things are going and if something needs to be sped up, slowed down, or tweaked. Once the process is done, every piece of equipment involved in that process needs to be broken down (to varying degrees), cleaned and sanitized. Meanwhile, preparation for the next day's targets are usually going on too. It’s a never ending cycle! So, do you think you are cut out for commercial brewing? Or would you rather stick with the freedom that homebrewing allows?

GALLERY