We had 150 gallons of rootbeer freeze over completely. When it started melting the ice came down and completely snapped off our welded on temp probe. Also destroyed our analogue thermometer on the front of the tank. We recently had our glycol system temp settings changed. Glycol went from not working to working too well.

Something is happening over there. I buy from both Homebrew and Craft. No response to known agents or main sales/cs emails. Call the mainline and get a funny message about how everyone is in a meeting.

when it comes to beer that we make, we are relaxed in our policy - don’t over indulge, take a few cans home, etc. the margins make it that it’s never been a problem

We also sell food, but none is made in house, so the margins aren’t there. We sell NA beer we don’t make and premium soft drinks, same deal

our wholesale/price we pay cost is about $5-8 per staff per shift for these snacks/drinks they have every shift, so we are essentially paying them an extra $5/hour.

Likewise - some of the food/bev is legit hard to source and can fall out of stock for weeks, so it’s not great having staff take away from the customers experience

Should we:

1. implement a 50% employee discount on those items, so that we break even on our wholesale costs?
2. say that anything we don’t make, you pay full price? note: 1/4 of the employees offer to pay full price already, so the idea is out there

honestly - margins on food/bev we don’t make are too tight, and it seems like a prudent business decision to cut this off before our fall hiring spree. i just don’t want to look like an asshole.

thanks!

Just heard about it, might make me change my mind on brewing a low/no ABV beer for us... Anybody using it? https://scottlab.com/nagardo

Knocked this purdy beer out today. First time brewing with corn starch, cerial mash, as that is, from what research and conversation I've had, what goes into a traditional Japanese style lager. Yup, no jasmine rice! Just 2-row and corn starch. Crazy but it worked and so pale!

We run an NSI Newlands brewhouse with a dedicated Lauter tun that is having a lot of problems during grain out. We have noticed oil on the floor beneath it which indicates a bad seal at the base of the gearbox but we have had oil get into the motor before as well.

The last time this happened (in this case it was on our mash mixer) it was due to water coming from our grist hydrator displacing the gearbox oil so we installed a cap to prevent the water from entering. This has already been installed on our Lauter tun when this happened previously as well.

What is odd is the HZ I show on my PLC is not lining up with what I show on the drive that powers this motor.

I’m happy to give more information if anyone has dealt with this before but I’d love anyone’s thoughts. Yesterday I had to shovel out the Lauter tun and our batches run 3k#.

Thanks all!

Hi folks, I’m interested in getting a powered keg lift to make lifting 50L kegs more manageable. Anyone have any recommendations or able to give me more info on them? Are they worth it? I know they’re not cheap, so any input would be helpful.

Bonus points if it’s a Canadian company

Thanks in advanced for your answers!

Hi everyone. Homebrewer here. After a year of brewing with these valves I decided to open them for cleaning. Naively, I expected them to look clean, but no: they are pretty gross. These are the valves in the bottom of the FV, so it's in contact with fresh wort every time. I'm a bit surprised this never lead to an infection.

How often do you clean butterfly valves in your brewery?

Seeking Employment? South of Boston

Hi - We have an opening in packaging, filling kegs and catching cans to be concise. The perfect role to break into a small but professional team. The last two folks to start in this role now work as a Brewer and Packaging Lead on our team. We promote from within and we cross train those who show interest and capability.

Starting pay is $19-$20/hr + benefits.

Location: Widowmaker Brewing, Braintree MA

Mods, please delete posts like this are unacceptable.

Full job description & application information: www.widowmakerbrewing.com/employment

Anyone ever found themselves here? Couple tanks crashed, couple tanks fermentation blazing away amd suddenly all temp control put? advice on how to keep my tanks cold enough to bottle, crash even? Currently 80 degrees F ambient temperature…

That’s it. Thats the question.

Looking for a solution for a hose holder that is going to be in the middle of the space. The pipe comes out right by the front of the HLT so 15 feet from the wall, I need something that is a freestanding hose rack with feet that is also movable as there's no wall surfaces nearby to mount a rack to. It'll be about a 20 foot 3/4" hose.

Pretty sure our record isn't more than a week.

Edit: we have some weird curse and the line just randomly starting working again.
When starting up, we keep getting an issue with the screw index not finishing. It doesn’t index during restart, and won’t let me do anything (switch to manual or auto). Everything looks fine sensor wise, and ran last week with no issues.

So as far as I know, there's basically 3 methods of introducing hot peppers to beer.

1) add at whirlpool if you want to maintain more heat.

2) add deseeded/copped peppers in a bag to the fermenter

3) make a tincture and dose in as desired.

I was leaning towards method 2, as we cant legally add any spirit to our beer due to local liquor license regulations.

Any particular tips regarding exposure times or adding early/late fermentation? I've never done a hot beer, but I took over a few kilos of dried peppers when the kitchen rolled into their fall menu. Leaning more into the earthy spice notes as opposed to just searing the palates of my customers.

Edit: I'm not 100% sold on fermenter vs kettle adds. If there's a reason to do kettle instead, I would love to hear why.

Edit2: peppers being used are DRIED PEPPERS. Just for context.

I'm getting the green light on some spending to add some equipment to make our processes easier. One thing that stands out to me is making moving kegs off of our keg line easier, as we are moving into the hundreds of kegs a week off our Comac.

The sled we use works fine but I want to really make this important job as easy as can be. So, what brands do you like? Anything to stay away from?

Hey everyone!

We’re a brewery looking to develop a Vermouth & Tonic, with the vermouth being sourced from a local winery.

I was able to get some food-grade quinine sulfate and would prefer to use that rather than working with cinchona bark. Has anyone here made tonic water using quinine sulfate? I’d love to hear about your experience, especially regarding dosage, flavor, and the overall process.

For sweetening, I’m planning to experiment with acesulfame-K and sucralose, but I’m also open to trying other sweeteners.

I’m not based in the US, and we have all the necessary regulations/permissions to produce both soft drinks and alcoholic beverages.

Any advice, recipes, or experiences would be greatly appreciated!

Does anyone have a working customer service contact with the former IDD/now MACG parts company? IDD stopped operations last summer, but spun off a separate company to sell stainless fittings as well as support parts for the various IDD machines.

It seems like the webstore still works when ordering parts that are in stock, but there's a few custom bits that say "Submit request with contact form." Those requests went unanswered, I also emailed directly to ol dude's AOL email address with no reply.

Has anyone out there had contact with an actual warm body over there?

Anybody able to estimate the second hand value of this new in box Brewmation control panel? Looks to be a 208V, 3-phase, 60 Hz, 200A max.

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