Standing on Skipton Road at 6:15AM waiting on Oliver to pick
me up, it was all becoming a reality now.
I was finally in the UK. I was
finally starting my first brewery job.
And I had woken up at the god forsaken time of 5am. This was to be my schedule for the next 3
months. A slight change of schedule from
what I had grown accustomed to in Chicago – starting work at 10am. Now by 10am almost half my work day would be
over.
My expectations for the day were not very high. I expected
to be doing basic labor for a while – cask washing, shoveling grain, cleaning,
etc – but I was looking forward to getting past the uncomfortableness of being
the new guy and contributing to the brewery in my own way.
 |
Casks getting loaded on pallets to be
filled with beer the next day. |
We arrived at the brewery in about 15 minutes after Oliver picked
me up. The drive from Harrogate to
Knaresborough was surprisingly busy for such an hour – may be the English were
earlier risers than Americans or maybe I just had no idea that people’s days
started much earlier than mine typically had in the past. Oliver and I entered in the side door behind
the massive stainless steel tanks while everyone else was waiting at the front
where two large steel sliding doors opened the brewery up to the world. The brewery was housed in a large steel
structure resembling an airplane hangar – a large half circle corrugated steel
roof extending for nearly a football field’s length.
After I got introduced to everyone, and quickly forgot
everyone’s name, everyone very promptly got to work. Kat fixed coffee and tea for everyone. Everyone had their own steel toe, waterproof
boots and a locker to hold their stuff.
It all operated like a well-oiled machine – everyone had their tasks for
the day and it was just a matter of getting it done that determined the success
of their job. As everyone started
tackling their morning tasks, Oliver gave me a tour.
 |
| The cask washer beside a wall of casks. |
The brewery was very orderly and very logically set up. Behind the two massive doors, the casks sat
stacked 4 rows of 6 high. Stacked on
pallets with trays placed between each row, the casks were able to be easily
moved and rearranged as needed. There
were 9 gallon casks, 11 gallon casks, and full 18 gallon casks. Beside the casks was two bathrooms and a
large stainless steel utility sink and dishwasher. Behind the casks was the cask washer. Placed up against the wall, the cask washer
was a 3 cask washer. A cask stand stood
close to the cask washer with a large plastic tub positioned under the stand to
catch the remaining contents of each cask as it was emptied and rinsed. Behind the cask washer on the right side of
the building was a two story structure with the lower level having an enclosed
laboratory making up one room and a supplies closet making up the other. The upper level was used for grain storage
and for access to the top of the mash tun for loading the grain hopper. The 30 barrel brew house stood behind this
with a hot liquor tank, a cold liquor tank, a CIP system, and another hot
liquor tank. On the left side of the
building stood a two story structure with the lower level having a small office
for Oliver positioned adjacent to the kitchen and the upper level housed Tom’s
office. Behind that was a closet for
storing the canning system, filters, and pumps.
Then more cask and can storage and then behind that stood CO2 tanks and
O2 tanks beside a large bright tank for carbonating beer prior to kegging and
canning. 6 large conical fermenters
finished the remainder of the left side of the room across from the brew house. The fermenters were custom made by a local
fabricator with a manway opening at the top for dryhopping. All of this composed the main area of the
brewery. Behind the main area was a two
story cold room. The lower level was
held at cellar temperature for cask conditioning, while the upper level housed
all of the hops at 2 deg C. Finally,
behind the cold storage was a staging area for prepping cask orders for
delivery.
 |
| Research - Hales Pub, Harrogate's oldest pub |
This is my world for the next three months. Day in and day out, opportunities will arise
to make me become very familiar with every aspect of the brewery – but for now
my main tasks are washing pallet after pallet of casks, making sure that they
are absolutely spotless on the inside, and filling casks from the fermenters
that stand 12 feet over my head in what seem like a tank of infinite
capacity. Regardless of how menial the
task, I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity. What can I complain about? I am in UK, working for an awesome
brewery…spending my free time “researching” the drinking culture in the UK
while sampling as many cask beers that I can get my hands on. Also, it doesn’t hurt that everyone I have
met so far has been incredibly friendly and accommodating to me and very
curious and supportive of our goals for Present Tense. 3 months is quite a while to be away,
especially when I had to leave someone very special behind, but this is a once
in a lifetime opportunity, and I am doing best to make the most of this
experience and prepare myself to bring a little bit of the UK back to Chicago.
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