Back to Scotland, back to work and back to my reports, that’s the fifth of my experience here in Cairndow at Fyne Ales Brewery.
Last two weeks were perfect, they’ve let me follow the brewer for several brewdays in the big brewery and during the last ones he left me do some passages by myself, it was so exciting! I’m learning a lot about brewing procedures, about the problems that could happen and how to solve them in the quickest and best way.
I’ve also seen how they brew the smallest batches in the old brewery, the one they started with: all the phases are manually controlled, you always have to be there in order to check that everything goes well. That was very useful, I’ve understood better how the process is carried out, especially because the new brewery plant is almost totally automatic.
You always have to be ready though, both for the manual and the automatic process: there are measurements of the wort to be done throughout all the process, especially in the end, when it’s time to transfer the wort to the fermenter: you want to know precisely how much fermentable sugars are in it, in order to obtain the same beer every time.
Next week should be a clearing up one, we have to tidy up and clean both the two breweries, because they will have a special meeting in two weeks: some technicians will analyse the plant and consider if Fyne Ales could sell its beers to some of the most important supermarket brands of the UK. It would be a big leap for them.
