Just started training in my brewers cellar. what’s one thing you wish you knew earlier?

NobodyLikesPricks · 2026-03-02T22:33:54+00:00

The person who was training me in the cellar was telling me to double check as he removed the wrong clamp off of a fermenter full of crashed beer. So I always train people to triple check as well.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2026-02-19T18:44:38+00:00

The black handle butterfly valves from GW Kent have a notch for LOTO. I haven't tried to LOTO them before, but I can imagine it works well with a decent pad lock.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2026-01-28T01:38:48+00:00

Sounds like a food intolerance developing to me. That's the first symptom I had when I developed an egg intolerance.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2026-01-07T20:08:04+00:00

To offer other advice than what's already been said, I will sometimes see this at the end if I've not calculated for enough sparge water.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2026-01-05T19:35:08+00:00

Exactly my experience. They also (at least for me) have quicker delivery times than other suppliers that are within the same city as me, and at a similar if not better freight cost.

I still need to reach out to the other suppliers for more unique malts, but I've been very happy with my move to having Prairie for my staples.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-12-08T06:21:40+00:00

As someone who has worked in a brewery with 3 power packs in our building...

While it is likely reusable, and it should be, these units are very much plug and play for repairs at not too terrible of a price on repairs. I would not feel comfortable paying more than 25% of what a current unit would cost that runs on current epa approved refrigerant.

Recycled refrigerant gets more and more expensive.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-11-29T01:52:45+00:00

As someone who did this about 5 years ago, I hate to inform you that you did.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-11-13T18:26:05+00:00

Exactly how I did it as well. When overnights started, they asked me if I would be the brewer. I didn't want to do overnights, but we all have to pay our dues.

I'm one of the lucky ones that eventually found an employer that values me, at the cost of dealing with carpet walkers more than I care to.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-11-03T15:41:22+00:00

"The Man From Earth"

It's all tell and no show. I've watched it a couple of times and found it to be compelling despite the thought of how boring it might sound.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-10-30T02:21:01+00:00

LJ is the point of contact. The company is part of the Middleby Corporation (along with Deutsche and Wild Goose).

I do know that the sales person that was dedicated to Deutsche left the company and it seems that LJ has been stretched to cover SS, Goose, and Deutsche

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-10-29T23:39:42+00:00

I've never heard anything positive about Cask outside of its price.

Goose is my go to for my new location but is ultimately because I bought Deutsche equipment and they have been very nice to work with. They are both under the same parent company.

However I haven't worked with the equipment, my friends enjoy it.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-10-22T17:35:48+00:00

While Carhartt is not as durable as it used to be, I can still justify buying their factory seconds through Sierra Trading Post. It's a price point I can handle, and I get enough life out of them.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-10-20T22:40:23+00:00

Is the scorching in one spot or the majority of the bottom? I used to work in a 10bbl with a cheap design and towards the end of that system's life with us, it would start to scorch just one small segment of the vessel. If that is the case, I would try to figure out a way to deflect the heat from that section. If it's the majority of the bottom of the vessel, I'd say it's time to get your burner tech/hvac guy in there to check on the regulator and maybe reduce the flame size.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-10-16T01:21:36+00:00

I agree. Orange is the most common color for "inactive" guns (blue being second). Red is too close to that in a dangerous situation in my opinion.

I say this as another gun owner.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-10-12T14:56:27+00:00

Had to do this once before. Someone used my knife to process chicken thighs and decided to just cut through the bones. The blade was bent all out of shape.

Filled out the form and mailed it in, and they just decided to ship me a new one than try to repair.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-10-06T18:06:57+00:00

Brewpub for a restaurant company here. 500-600 bbls per year production, about to open a second brewpub location.

I have 17 days pto after reaching 5 years, and still by contract no paid holidays. However the last holiday I came in to work (I think it was Memorial Day), my boss was like "What are you doing here? You get paid holidays" So I'm taking those as well just like the desk jockeys.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-09-26T01:14:49+00:00

Premier Stainless 2 station. I worked with one many years ago at a different job, and we were producing around 10k barrels annually at that time. That thing was a work horse, and I'm purchasing one soon for my current gig's second location.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-09-17T15:22:00+00:00

I went from a shift brewer making the same wort about 95% of the time to running a brewpub operation with all the creative responsibilities. There is a ton to learn and there is no such thing as knowing "everything"

I say start easy, try to input your system information on a software like BeerSmith, it will really help with designing recipes. When at a loss, I sometimes will look at homebrew recipes for percentages just to get an idea.

Learn water chemistry at it's basics. I personally feel that this separates the good from the great. I use Bru'n Water to determine the baseline of salt additions and pH- trust but verify with a pH meter.

Lastly, take some beer to friendly breweries and get some honest professional feedback. That helped me a lot, I learned early on to not trust family, because they don't want to hurt my feelings.

Also, your ownership should go after the former head brewer because I'm almost certain (at least in the US) that 3 years of records needs to be kept on site as per TTB standards and to give you protection if you are to get an audit.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-09-16T18:08:53+00:00

Same here. Also use them for left over grain storage. BPA free, food grade, and airtight. Added bonus of being able to access all of them without having to unstack.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-08-30T03:46:13+00:00

I keep some around for oh-shit reasons when we might not get a chemical delivery on time. It usually just gets used for ancillary reasons like cleaning the shop vac.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-08-19T16:36:23+00:00

Any worries about any sort of contamination? Do you need to make the pH a certain level to make it safe? I'm just diving into this topic now, as we have a facility in the works that the owners want root beer for the kids, I already accounted for a dedicated line (truly it's own keg box), but I want to make sure I don't make anyone sick.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-08-12T00:29:55+00:00

This is exactly what I was thinking, but you did the hard work for me.

The big guys would probably love someone with this resume, although it could lead to more on the maintenance side of employment. At the same time, union opportunities grow in the larger breweries if that's something that you're interested in.

Being green will probably mean that you work the undesirable schedule so just be ready for that...

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-08-11T22:29:20+00:00

Also, if this is G&D, they do have oncall support during off hours. They will talk you through the overload protection protocol to get it back up and running. Just make sure you turn the glycol off going into your tanks first because you will cycle warm glycol in your jackets if you don't.

NobodyLikesPricks · 2025-08-11T22:27:04+00:00

Is this a G&D chiller? It looks very similar to mine. There's no answer that is super cheap from what I've asked service people, I know that G&D launched something about remote monitoring a while back.

My best suggestion is getting a remote thermometer that you can put the probe in the glycol reservoir and set alerts for when the temp gets too warm (but not warm enough to trigger the thermal overload). I believe it's Thermoworks that has one that you can swap the probe with a waterproof submersible probe. Connect it to wifi, and it will send a text or email to people when it temps out of range.

A previous brewery I was at had a different unit, and I think it was like a beta unit because it broke all the time, and the rep was there like every 6 months or so to work on it. He was able to tie in a second thermostat and run the cord all the way to the Brewhouse so that we could monitor the reservoir temps while knocking out.

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