Porter Named!

Well the porter has been named, it will be called BackDraft Porter!

A little about labels and such, and why sometimes it takes so long from the idea until the brew is out in the stores.

To begin with, we decide that we want to brew a new beer. Then we come up with a recipe, James, Phil, and I have plenty of home brewing experience, so sometimes a recipe is easy, other times we play a bit more with a prototype. Once we come up with recipe we have to see if there are any "non-traditional" ingredients or processes done. Traditional ingredients include the big 4, non traditional include spices, honey, berries, and other flavorings. Non-traditional processes include aging in barrels among other things that we have yet to find out about. If something non-traditional is done we have to file a Statement Of Process with the Federal Government, which they will either approve or reject. Once the SOP is approved (with labeling requirements) we can then brew the beer and make the label.

Once we create the label (Phil is the creative one) we send it off to be approved by the Federal Government once again. They look at lettering height, what the label says, if any trademarks might be infringed on, and if the name is acceptable. Once the label is approved and produced by the label maker, we can bottle the beer and get it out to our distributors.

Each state has their own labeling laws, so what might be acceptable in one state, may not be acceptable in another state. Also, with the way the government works, what would be acceptable to one reviewer might not to another. It can be a confusing process.

That is about it today

Cheers,

Damase

Engine 5

Well, we just finished bottling some Engine 5 (102 cases worth) we'll end up bottling about 200 more cases next week. One the schedule for the rest of this week...
Filter Balsam's Lager
Brew Balsam's Lager
Bottle Balsam's Lager

A busy week coming up.

At the end of next week we have the GIBF in Providence, it is a good festival, especially Saturday Afternoon. That is when the brewers find out if they won any awards for their beers!

Damase

A new Beer

Well today we just finished brewing a new beer. The as of yet unnamed Chocolate Porter (so far we have discussed "Dalmatian, Backdraft, and Paramedic.) The goal is a beer with a subtle hint of Chocolate, coming from the imported Chocolate Malt (no chocolate used in the malt, but the taste is similar to chocolate.) We will find out in a few weeks how well we did in hitting out goal.

Now in the fermenters we have:
FV1: Pozharnik
FV2: Porter
FV3: Empty
FV4: Wassail
20BBL: Balsam's Lager
Barrels: Pompier (aging nicely if I do say so myself)
Bright Tank: Engine 5 (we should be bottling it out next week!)

Today we have two tastings we are attending, Phil and James are off to Fancestown, NH (The Village Store), and I am off to Sutton, MA (Heritage Starlight in the Manchaug Mills.) So if you are in the area, stop by and say hi!

Well off to make more boxes and assemble 6 pack holders for the Engine 5 bottling run next week.

Have a great weekend, and Cheers,

Damase

View The Brewery

Forgive my shaking camera. I thought I would give this a shot. I will try to update the video at a later time with better camera angles.

The video shows the Mash Tun (Right) and the Brew Kettle (Left). The camera then swings to show the fermenters. We have a 15 barrel (465 Gallon) Brewhouse. The fermenters are 30 barrel fermenters with the exception of the 15 barrel fermenter and the 40 barrel conditioning tank.



James

Filtering Engine 5

Today we are filtering 30 barrels of Engine 5 scheduled to be bottled on Monday and Tuesday.

Engine 5 is filtered using a plate and frame filter along with a cartridge filter. A plate and frame sandwiches sheets of filter membrane (paper) between two plastic plates. As the beer is pushed through the sheets, yeast, trub, and other particulates are stripped from the beer for a clean final product. Our filter sheets will strip any particle that is greater than 6 microns (0.0006 inches). Once the beer passes through the plate and frame filter, it goes into a cartridge filter. A cartridge filter is basically a large version of your home water filters. It has a filtering membrane inside the housing that will strip out any that is greater that 0.65 microns. At 0.65 microns, the beer is nearly sterile; meaning that any bacteria that may have survived the plate and frame filter, will most likely be stripped out by the cartridge before it enters the Bright Tank. Once it is in the Bright Tank, the beer is carbonated and ready for packaging.

A filter run can take anywhere from 3-8 hours. It has taken as long as 12 hours before. Therefore, it is always nice to have a brewery dog to play with in the meantime.



Here is a picture of the setup of the two filters. On the left-hand side is the Plate and Frame filter which leads into the cartridge filter on the right. After the cartridge filter, the beer goes into the Bright Tank.




Here is a better view of the cartridge filter and the connections to the filters.

James

Mowgli, The Brewery Dog.

It is time to put some pictures up on the blog and what better than to start with the brewery dog, Mowgli.

Mowgli is a full German Shepard and will be two years old this December. He keeps us occupied throughout the day by following us everywhere, demanding that we play with him. I'm pretty sure we lose an hour or two a day having to entertain him. We ask that anyone who visits the brewery not to play with him since we have to suffer the consequences. Just kidding. All in all he is a great dog to have around the brewery. It sure makes filtering days a little easier.




James

Kegs of Pozharnik

Well we finished the kegging of the Pozharnik today. All in all a successful day. The rest of the day is spent cleaning and sanitizing for tomorrow's filtering day. Tomorrow we filter Engine 5 into the Bright tank.

Now for a few definitions that you might read here on the website...
Ingredients in our beer:
Malt: Grain (Barley, Wheat, Rye, and others) that has begun to germinate and then the germination is stopped. The Malt is then kilned, or roasted, or some cobination of the two to create different colors (shades of brown.)
Water: Self explanitory, water is water. We do add various chemicals to the water to get it where we want. We add gypsum to make the water harder, which emulates much of the water in England.
Hops: The flower of the hop plant. We get two major properties from the hops, the first is the bitterness (the Alpha Acid) which is disolved after much boiling (at least 60 minutes), the second is Aroma, which if you boil too long you lose. What we do is put bittering hops in early in the boil, and then aroma hops in later (best of both worlds.) I have always joked about making a beer that smelled hoppy, so folks would think it is bitter, but with very little bittering hops, and another beer with very little Aroma hops. I would do this just for fun to see what I get.
Yeast: A living creature that makes beer. All we make is yeast food, the yeast makes the beer. Yeast, through their biochemical reactions, create all sorts of flavors for the beer.

That is all for definitions now. More will follow

Cheers,

Damase

Done!

We have just finished bottling the last of the 200 cases of Pozharnik (filling about 16 kegs on Monday.) So now it is clean up time.

A little of what we have at the brewery for sale:

Growlers: Halligan, Engine 5, Feuerwehrmann, Shouboushi, Fireman's Pail, and The Big O
22 oz Bombers: Halligan, Feuerwehrmann, Shouboushi, Fireman's Pail, and The Big O
1L Swing Tops: POZHARNIK (as of just now!) and Bagpiper

The Beers (available right now):
Halligan, An IPA
Engine 5, A Red Ale
Feuewehrmann, A Black Lager
Shouboushi, A Ginger Pilsner
Fireman's Pail, A Pale Ale
The Big O, An Oktoberfest
Pozharnik, An Imperial Stout brewed with Vanilla and Espresso
Bagpier, A Scotch Ale, a portion of the Malt was smoked over locally grown apple wood.

I'll try to write more (or James will) this weekend about definitions that you might find on our blog, and who knows what else.

Damase

Pozharnik... Day 2

Well got 64 cases done today, 111 cases left to go! As for the video camera idea, I'll look into it, the commentary will be exciting (well the banter will be as we all go slowly insane :))

Bottling

Yesterday began the bottling run of Pozharnik, it continues today, tomorrow and Friday. We keg on Monday. Bottling the Pozharnik (and all our 1 L beers) is truly a labor of love. We do not have an automated bottler, we have a 4 bottle hand bottler. So each bottle is hand filled, hand capped, and then the shrink wrap is finally put on, by you guessed it... hand.

We have 200 cases to get out, our usually production day is about 50 cases, if all goes well. We did 25 cases yesterday, hoping for 75 today, then 50 a day for the rest of the week. We'll see how it goes. As for pitures of everything, I have to remember to bring in my camera.

Hope all is well, and time to get bottling!

Damase

Tank 1 Filled With Pozharnik

As Damase has already informed, yesterday was a double brew day. After a total of three batches, Pozharnik is finally in the tank and already rocking!

For those of you have not been on a brewery tour or haven't homebrewed, when yeast is supplied with a sugar source (wort) they start consuming the sugars for growth and survival. This is what we call fermentation. When the yeast eats up sugar it creates two byproducts, CO2 and ethanol. During the first days of fermentation (Primary fermentation) there is a large volume of CO2 being released. If a fermentation tank did not have any means of rapidly releasing the CO2, the tank would build up pressure and possibly explode. This is why we have what is called a "Blow-off" hose. It is just a simple hose coming from the tank into a bucket filled with water to create an airlock but easily allow the CO2 to escape. When fermentation becomes visible, the water in the blow-off bucket will start to violently bubble. This is what we call "rocking."

Leaving the brewery around 8:45PM or so, all you could smell was the sweet smell of freshly brewed wort and vanilla balanced with the subtle scent of espresso.

Who says brewing is all fun and games...

It is also hard work too!

Today was a double brew day of Pozharnik. This means the first batch starts at 6:30, the last person out the door at about 8ish (or 8:30 if all went well... did it James?)

Basically the same things happen, as in the last post on Pozharnik, but two of them happen back to back. A long day, but a good day. It is always good when you get to make beer!

Damase

Pozharnik Brew Day

Today we brew the second batch of the 2008 Pozharnik Russian Imperial Stout. If you are wondering about the brewing process, I'll give you all a run down. (more detail will follow as time goes on.)

The Day before:
1) Heat the Water we need for the next day
2) Mill the Malt we need
3) Clean the Fermenter

The Brew Day:
1) Mash in (combine the milled Malt and water) in the Mash/Lauter Tun, let rest for 40 minutes
2) While Mashing, heat additional water
3) Sanitize the fermenter
4) after allow the mash to sit for 40 minutes, recirculate the wort
5) When the water is heated, transfer to the Hot Liquor tank (sanitizing the heat exchanger along the way)
5) After 20 minutes of recirculation we begin to send the wort into the kettle.
6) Collect the amount of wort we want, and bring to a boil
7) Empty, by hand, the wet grains in the Mash/Lauter tun (the grains are then sent to a local farmer, Fitch's Dairy Farm)
8) Boil for 90 minutes, while adding the hops at the various points of time
9) After the boil, we begin a 15 minute Whirpool (allowing the hops to settle in a cone at the center of the kettle)
10) A 20 minute rest, where we add the yeast to the fermenter
11) Knock Out, send the wort through the heat exchanger, allowing it to cool to 70 F (Ales) or 65 F (Lagers), to the Fermenter
12) CLEAN... Clean the kettle, the heat exchanger
13) End of the brew day, if we are brewing tomorrow, repeat the process with the grains. The water we recover into the hot liquor tank from the heat exchanger.

More on the various steps and parts later

Enjoy,

Damase

What do you do when you want to save a beer?

Well you recreate it...

What do I mean. Well this year we brewed a little too much Oktoberfest. So we bottle a little of the third batch, and now we are going to "Spice it up." Adding Cinnamon, Allspice, Clove, Nutmeg, Brown Sugar, Pepper, Ginger and a few other spices we will make a Wassail (name to be determined.) It is going to be a draft only beer, and who knows, maybe it will become part of our regular cycle of beers.

Also today we are blending the hogshead of Pozharnik with the tank of Pozharnik, transferring the blend to the Bright Beer Tank and carbonate it for bottling and kegging next week. And if that was not enough, we brew prep (heat water, mill grains, clean the fermenter) for the next batch of Pozharnik.

Cheers,

Damase

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Welcome

Here is the first post of the new Pennichuck Brewer's Blog.

First a little about this blog:

Who we are: Pennichichuck Brewing Company, a small craft brewery brewing Ales and Lagers
Where we are: Milford, NH
Our Website: www.pennichuckbrewing.com
The Contributors:
Phil Jewett --- President and Chief Bottle Washer
James Moriarty --- Assistant Brewer
Damase Olsson --- Head Brewer
And that is it for now...

The goal of the blog is to write our thoughts, opinion, where we will be pouring, what is in the tanks, and other fun things that we think of, when we think of it.

What is in the Tanks:
FV1: Pozharnik Russian Imperial Stout, there is also 1 Heaven Hill Bourbon barrel of it ready to be blended (later today)
FV2: Engine 5
FV3: Hose Down yeast propagation!
FV4: Empty, soon to receive our Wassail
20BBL: Balsam's Lager
Conditioning Tank: Some Pompier, aging with French Oak Spirals, there is also 8 Heaven Hill Bourbon Barrels with Pompier aging in it.
BBT: The Big O Oktoberfest.

Now we will be taking the Big O, adding some spices (in FV4) and creating our Wassail from it. Should be a fun time!

That about covers the first post, more will be added later.

Damase