A day in the life of a brewer at The Alchemist, home of Heady Topper

8 a.m.

Most days, Jim Conroy, 44, is already at work. But today is Thursday and he has drawn the last brew shift. He can ease into the morning.

He wakes up at his Waterbury home and enjoys coffee with his wife, Carlotta. He goes on a short, chilly January hike with their 15-year-old husky named Cahill. More coffee, puttering and house chores follow before he realizes it's time to leave.

"This is a new schedule for me. I was the morning shift," he says later. "It's different to have time before work."

11 a.m.

The day's first visitors, four 20-something women and two bearded young men, have queued up informally outside The Alchemist's Stowe brewery.

It's cold, maybe 10 degrees. They look at each other, antsy, and wonder aloud if they're allowed to enter yet. It's a short line, as lines here go.

Without missing a beat, they have the green light to enter — an employee waves through the glass doors, letting them know that the wonderful hour has arrived.

Beer o'clock is what you make it.

11:33 a.m.

Conroy likes to get to the brewery a little early to get focused, centered and ready for the day.

There's no timecard to punch. The sense of duty switches on almost immediately without it.

He checks in with his fellow brewers, Chelsea Nolan and Maureen Keefe, to see how the day's first two brews of Focal Banger, their popular India pale ale, have progressed. He counts off the necessary bags of malt in the grain room.

Aside from co-owner John Kimmich, Conroy's been brewing Alchemist beer longer than anyone. He started training under Kimmich in 2011 at the former Waterbury pub of the same name after several years as head brewer at The Shed. The plan was for Conroy to oversee the brewing operation at the soon-to-open cannery up the road.

More: Waterbury or Eaterbury? Revamped town is a hub of good food and beer

"I didn't really become a brewer until I started working with John," says Conroy, now the lead brewer at the Stowe site. "I learned volumes in such a short period of time."

Three months later, famously, the brewpub flooded during Tropical Storm Irene and closed for good. The entire business migrated to and took off at the new facility, on higher ground.

11:50 a.m.

Conroy checks on the water that will supply today's brew of Ouroboros, a seasonal double IPA with dried orange peels.

The tank is massive, able to hold more than 1,500 gallons — and almost filled to its 51-barrel capacity. It will yield nearly 7,000 pints of beer once the lids go on the cans in four weeks' time.

With everything running on schedule, Conroy slips over to the staff lounge a few paces away from the tanks and the brew tower. The former line cook gulps down a cup and a half of coffee, reflecting on the differences between his old job and his current calling.

"Cooking, your brain is on fire. You're cooking, reading (order) tickets in front of you. It's a thrill," he says. "Brewing, you need to slow it down and pay attention."

It's go time.

12:06 p.m.

Conroy walks down the stairs into the mud room-slash-locker room just off the brewhouse.

He sets his blue coffee mug, still half full, on the shelf.

He changes into a black utility shirt and matching pants. He swaps his hiking boots for a pair of black, waterproof work boots. Off comes his blue-and-red Burton winter hat for an all-black Alchemist baseball cap.

The recipes for Heady Topper, which he used to make at the Waterbury facility, and Focal Banger are committed to memory. But last night was his first crack at Ouroboros since 2017, so he scans the outline once more before springing into action.

12:15 p.m.

The first step involves adding a combination of salts to his water in the tank, now heated to 155 degrees.

The salts, Conroy explains, treat the water in order to achieve the desired mouthfeel for a particular beer. Those mineral properties can vary wildly from one brewery to another.

"Brewers are going to brew to their palate and what they like," he says.

12:42 p.m.

The brew officially begins.

Conroy turns a dial to set the speed at which the water flows into the mash tun and heads to the grain room, adjacent to the brew house, to begin dumping the 55-pound bags of pearl malt into the hopper that feeds the tun.

This will take a while — the recipe requires more than a ton and a half. He doesn't mind.

"I like this. I can get in my own head," he says about 25 bags into the process. "I am thinking, reflecting, doing. I like that it's heady and blue collar at the same time."

More: Beer money for social good: Alchemist’s Jen Kimmich

Where the rest of the building is dominated by the familiar, yeasty aroma of brewing, hops working their magic, this phase of the process is distinctly different. The grain room is dry and slightly stuffy, the smell somewhere between a barn and a bakery.

1:12 p.m.

Conroy said the mashing-in process should take about a half hour and he hits that number on the nose.

He climbs back up the stairs to the top of the mash tun, the front of his clothes now covered in white dust, and dangles a thermometer into the mixture of malt and hot water that will create wort, the liquid foundation of the beer. It reads 143 degrees, but he needs 144.

He pumps in another barrel or so of hot water.

More: A day in the life of Lloyd Squires, Vermont's 'best' bagel maker

1:19 p.m.

The grain bed is at the desired temperature. Conroy closes the lid on the mash tun and lets it churn away. It will take an hour to extract the sugar that will help produce the alcohol in the beer.

But waiting time doesn't mean down time. There's always something to do.

He tidies up the grain room, laying out the exact number of bags needed for the next brew. The Stowe location only brews on Wednesdays and Thursdays, three sessions each day, so the bags will sit in place for six days.

Mondays and Tuesdays are for cellaring — moving some 240 barrels of beer between fermenters, conditioning tanks. Fridays are pretty loose: After a half-day of dry-hopping and other tasks, Conroy has an end-of-week debrief with Kimmich.

2:10 p.m.

Conroy uses a roll of heavy-duty plastic wrap to seal a 5-foot-square cardboard box of used grain bags to be picked up for recycling.

The Stowe brewery also has its own wastewater treatment facility; solid waste is separated and shipped to a digester to create electricity. And spent grain goes to local farmers to feed their livestock.

They aim to keep their environmental footprint as small as possible.

2:15 p.m.

Conroy flips a couple of knobs on the brew tower control panel. The water begins to drain from the mash tun to be cycled back through the grain. This should take 7 minutes.

2:22 p.m.

Now it's time to test the pH of the wort. Basically sugar water at this point, it's closer to becoming beer by the minute, already taking on a sweet golden color.

Conroy fills a slender beaker and inserts the meter, which feeds to a handheld digital display. It's a couple tenths away from the number he wants to see — plenty close enough to move on to the next step.

2:26 p.m.

This is where the finesse kicks in. After flipping a handle to begin transferring the liquid to the brew kettle, Conroy begins to add more water to the top of the grain.

He keeps a close eye on the flow in and out of the mash tun — adding water helps maintain the pressure needed to keep the liquid flowing and the grain from solidifying as it drains. He says he enjoys that the new facility isn't fully automated, run by a computer the way many breweries are today.

"The treatment of this bed is going to determine our success," he says before clambering down the steps of the brew tower yet again.

A hundred feet away, customers peer over the chest-high wall dividing the tap room and the brew floor while tasting the fruits of the labor.

2:38 p.m.

A seven-barrel tank of Heady Topper arrives from the Waterbury brewery, destined to become free samples for visitors. Conroy helps unload it with an electric pallet jack.

2:44 p.m.

"It's a little more of the art form, a little more of the feel," he says.

This might be Conroy's favorite part of the brewing process. He's back atop the tower, peering into the mash tun. The saturated grain bed might as well be tea leaves. The wort continues its migration into the kettle. His eyes scan the gauges.

Everything still seems to be on schedule. His target boil time, 4 p.m., is still in sight.

3 p.m.

Another truck arrives at the loading dock. This time it's a tractor-trailer with nine pallets of malt. Conroy takes to the steps once again to move the shipment into the grain room.

3:40 p.m.

Lunchtime.

While the transfer to the steam-powered brew kettle continues, the heat ramps everything up toward boiling. Conroy walks to the stocked break area nearby. The former kitchen veteran crafts a turkey sandwich and places it on the electric grill for a panini-like effect.

"I can't even remember cooking on a line," he says. "In that perspective it feels really far away. I liked brewing immediately. It made sense."

4:02 p.m.

The temperature in the brew kettle reads 197 degrees. It's getting closer.

Conroy opens two large, gold cans of hop extract to add. In recent years, he says, brewers have moved away from using physical hops in the boil in favor of the oily, pungent concentrate version of the plant. It eliminates variables, allows for more consistency.

4:10 p.m.

With the wort at a boil, Conroy pours the hop extract, brown and syrupy, through the circular door at the top of the kettle. He closes the metal door. The Ouroboros will roll in there for an hour.

It's shockingly quiet, a hall of stainless steel, vaulted ceilings with three large fans constantly spinning.

"The sound is weird back here," he says. "You want to be able to hear something running or splashing if it is.

"We're entering the second phase of our night."

4:40 p.m.

Darkness has fallen outside the windows. Indoors, the tasting room grows louder, busier. in the distance. There's music in the background, but it's hard to tell what song is playing. Conroy, though, has the brewhouse to himself.

4:48 p.m.

Out-and-out brewing catastrophes, Conroy says, are remarkably rare. He can only recall one situation in his time with The Alchemist, a batch of Heady Topper that had to be tossed after the boiler ran out of gas and protein scorched on the bottom of the kettle.

"To completely (screw) up a batch takes a lot to go wrong," he says as he cleans out the empty mash tun with a red hose. "The beer is going to be different each time, but it's never going to be bad."

To maintain consistency across the brews, he explains, each week's four Focal Banger batches get blended in the 120-barrel conditioning tanks before canning.

4:56 p.m.

Cleaning out the lines and prepping for the move to the whirlpool tank, Conroy's navigation of the maze of handles, pipes and valves on the equipment resembles a savvy taxi driver on a congested cityscape. There's no second-guessing, no wasted movement.

Everything is deliberate with 900 gallons of boiling hot liquid above your head.

"You need to pretend you're doing something for the first time because if you do something stupid there are huge repercussions for doing something stupid," he says.

5:04 p.m.

The orange peels are next.

Shipped dehydrated, they've soaked in 5-gallon buckets of water to bring out a sweet, juicy aroma. They're what set Ouroboros apart from the rest of The Alchemist's IPAs.

Conroy unloads them into the bottom of the whirl.

5:10 p.m.

Conroy kills the boil on the kettle. He begins sending the wort to the whirl.

He empties bags of fresh mosaic hop pellets into the whirl as liquid fills the tank. They pack the bright, floral funk that will bolster the flavor of the beer. He stirs the hops, peels and wort together with a wooden canoe oar.

With the liquid nearly up to the bottom of the door on the side of the whirl, Conroy removes the oar and screws the hatch shut.

The wort will continue to flood the tank, cooling and combining with the new ingredients for another 24 minutes. Then the mixture gets another 20 minutes or so to rest.

5:44 p.m.

Again trying to get the most out of his time, Conroy sets off to clean out the now-empty brew kettle. He's taking the 14 metal steps to the top of the tower two at a time.

5:57 p.m.

"This is going to make or break our evening," Conroy says.

He opens a valve and fills two 5-gallon buckets with the contents of the whirl. He's examining the flow, the color, the consistency. It's a faintly glowing orange hue by the time it reaches full stream.

"That color is glorious, isn't it?" he asks, smiling.

It's time to send the concoction to one of the 12 fermenters — a tricky proposition. Ouroboros is one of the few beers The Alchemist produces that has this much solid waste to be filtered out by the strainer before the wort passes through a heat-exchanger on its way to the next destination.

The orange peels could clog the strainer and bring the process grinding to a halt. Conroy anxiously watches how the liquid flows out of the cooling mechanism.

6:09 p.m.

It's touch-and-go. The flow steadily dropped — (gulp) — until, somehow, it improved. Conroy isn't sure why. The gauges appeared to be correct. He decides to roll with it rather than over think it.

"We're certainly not home free, but we're better than where we were," he says.

6:22 p.m.

Yeast. A lot of it. And it's not coming out of a packet.

Conroy wheels a chilled keg toward the fermenter. It's filled with yeast that was captured from a recent brew to be reused — similar to a sourdough starter. They'll get eight weeks out of one generation of yeast, he says.

"Last week's beer is feeding this week's beer," Conroy explains as he attaches the keg to the tank and feeds the foamy substance into the wort.

6:45 p.m.

The exit tube from the whirl runs clear. All of the wort has made it to the fermenter without any serious hiccups. Conroy cheers.

"Yeah! The end of the world is not nigh!"

Since it opened in 2016, Conroy's logged more than 300 brews at the Stowe site. In his time in Waterbury, he estimates, that number was "a couple thousand" due to the cannery's smaller batches and busier schedule.

What does a perfect brew day look like?

"Except for this taking 10 minutes longer than it should? We just achieved one," he said. "We hit all our numbers pretty spot on. It's going to taste great."

7:16 p.m.

Having flushed the hops and peels out of the whirl, Conroy focuses his attention on the floor and the equipment he used to get the wort to the fermenter.

If one thing has become clear by this hour, it's this: There's a startling amount of janitorial work that goes into brewing beer.

"It's probably not as glamorous as people might think," Conroy says. "I came into brewing with no expectations so what it is ... is what it is. But I can see it for what it looks like, which is a lot of hoses."

He takes apart the strainer and washes away the orange peels caked onto the steel mesh. He sprays down the floor, flushes the pipes and lines with a caustic solution. He uses a rake-length squeegee to push the excess water and debris into the drain that runs lengthwise down the middle of the room.

Pesky shards of orange peel get stuck in cracks and corners. They refuse to go away without a fight.

7:48 p.m.

Nearly eight hours of scanning the room, running through the mental checklist are behind him, as are hours of dutiful cleaning. Now, Conroy says, "is a good time to go top to bottom."

He hikes back up the steps to the top of the brew tower. All good there.

He ambles back down the stairs. He breaks down the floor setup, coiling hoses and tucking them out of sight.

8:02 p.m.

Conroy tugs the red handle on the yellow rope hanging a few feet from the entrance to the retail cooler. The doors slide open and he makes his way inside. He winds his way to the left, around the stacked cases of beer.

At the front of the walk-in he plucks two black cans of Focal Banger from a four-pack. He cracks one seconds later. He savors the moment — the quiet, the cool, odorless air, the sense of accomplishment that comes at the end of the shift — and the world-class IPA, his favorite.

"It's a good place to have a beer," Conroy said.

Once more, it's back to the brewery. Between sips and breaks in conversation, Conroy continues to poke the orange peels through the metal drainage grate with his fingertips. There's a satisfaction in the seemingly endless upkeep.

"We try to put out a theory — try to one up each other, do one more good thing for the next person to take over on the line," he says.

8:45 p.m.

Conroy checks his phone as he changes out of his brewing gear, which he tosses into the green laundry bag in the corner of the room. He laughs at a text from his wife. Back in his street clothes, he heads to the door and the cold Stowe night to head home.

"It's pretty fun. It's a mini-mission every time," Conroy says. "The day does not go by slow."

Contact Austin Danforth at 651-4851 or edanforth@burlingtonfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @eadanforth.