These weeks were so great and exciting: on the one hand I continued to maintain the plant and to manage beers’ storaging, and on the other hand I shared some new experiences.
After one week of fermentation and one week of conditioning in steel tanks, beers have to be racked or kegged: for the first option we need of washed and steamed casks (from the cask washer of the previous record, do you remember?), while for the other one we use brand new kegs. Casks are the typical English beer containers, steel or hard plastic made of, containing 4.5, 9 or 18 UK gallons of beer, and are the most sold far and away. Kegs are special 30 litres-containers, built with a plastic bag inserted in a hard plastic shell: beer is pushed into the plastic bag, while at the tapping CO2 is pushed between the bag and the shell, in order to squash the bag and to allow beer to spillage from the draught.
In March there was the Great Scottish Beer Celebration (GSBC), and I participated with Malcolm and Janey: it was a beautiful festival dedicated to the beer, with a lot of people, music and of course different Scottish craft breweries. It was my first experience about beer selling and at the start I was quite uncomfortable, but my capacity to explain beer’s characteristics is improved gradually and I enjoyed so much. It’s funny to meet people at festivals and suggest them what to drink.
Furthermore we brewed a collaboration brew with two famous Italian breweries: Croce di malto and Foglie d’erba. We decided to brew a raspberry stout: the outcome was a dry beer made up of roasty malted flavours and enriched by the raspberries’ acidity and sweetness: awesome!
Cheers!
