Another great Brewster brew day has come and gone. In my last post, I wrote about Tradesman Brewing Co and Tanael who came to brew with us. She invited us to brew at Palmetto the following Sunday. What I didn't know is that she is the Head Brewer at Palmetto Brewing Co. She went to school in Berlin for four years where she earned a degree in brewing after which she was offered a job there. But she had family obligations so she returned to Venezuela. Wanting to come the US, she landed a job in Colorado. She moved here with her mother. She became a consultant nationally helping different breweries. Now working for Palmetto, she is designing their new brewery which will be located in the Park Circle area of North Charleston, South Carolina.
You cannot believe how grueling the work can be in a small brewery. Usually we are on the receiving end of the process. Until I joined the Brewsters, I never realized the talent and labor it takes to make great beer. There's milling the grain. Unlike home brewing where you either buy it milled or have a tiny mill to crush the grain, the larger places have giant bags to crush and labor saving ways to transfer the grain to the mash tun.
In addition to dumping a few bags of smaller sacks of grain in the mill for the experience, Clint used a forklift to grind a mega-bag of grain. Then a pipe sucks the milled grain into the mash tun.
This is the mash tun where you mix the grains and temperature controlled water to make wort. Wort is kind of like a tea where you draw the sugars out of the grain. It's the liquid that you will boil.
After we drained the wort, we added more liquid to rinse the grains (sparge) and fill the brew kettle up to the required amount of wort. The panel on the right controls the temperature of the hot liquor tank, mash tun and boil kettle.
While the brew kettle heats the wort to a boil, we prepare beets for color and we also have hibiscus to add for flavor and aroma.
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| Tana weighing hops. |
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| Sara Gayle enjoying the smell of the hops. |
We also selected and weighed the hops, smelling them as Tana explains how hops add aroma, bittering and flavors.
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| Hibiscus fllwers,owder and frated beets for our beer. |
Sparging.
Clint, a well known brewer for Palmetto shares a Great American Beer Festival entry with us. Caught red handed ( beet juice stains)
Hop addition.
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| Adding nutrients to the boil. |
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| Adding the beets for color. |
This is Clint who brews at Tradesman. Creative, fun, knowledgeable! He brewed for several years before coming to Charleston, SC and applying for a brewers job at Palmetto. They said they weren't hiring. He returned again and again dropping off a resume each time. They called him and he moved down four weeks later. Really great guy. After I brewed here, I bragged about it to a few other places and was asked if Clint was there. He's famous in area brew circles. He was fun and thought up the name for our beer, "Pinky Brewster."
Thank you Tana and Clint for giving up your Sunday to brew with our club. We can't wait to drink it!
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