So I'm brewing as we speak, milling in, and lautering actually.  My malt bill for this one is 7930lbs.  Siebel Institute grad, brewing pro since 2007. And no
I can't say where at.

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Of course you can

Yum...I want to go to there...where ever you are...Close to me????

How many bbl for that 8k pounds?  Whats to hop amount for 8k pounds of grain?

What is your system efficiency?

Were you a homebrewer before going pro?  Pro before going to Siebel?

K

ah, water, one of my favorite subjects.

well, first off, most try and start out with good water straight from the tap.  geography plays a big roll in that.  looking at historic brewing cities the world over, the best beers come from the best water source.  it's pretty apparent in the us seeing as how (from a brewing prospective) the best water is to be had in St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Golden CO. they all have really good salt/mineral content.  

anyways, the other thing is to pay the water utility to process it as close to spec as possible. that's what most of the big players do.  we don't at my brewery we arn't near that big but if you have a major brewery from the big three in your city chances are you got some primo water for making fizzy yellow stuff. maybe not the salt content for your darker stuff, but its better to start with less so you can add what you need, ya da ya da.

anyways, my water is two things, alkaline and chlorinated.  ph runs around 8.7 ish and is on the buffered side of things.  to get around this we use just regular old lactic acid.  in my previous brewery i used phosphoric acid.  i like h3po4 cause the phosphorus is a nice yeast nutrient, downside is that in larger quantities it has kind of a funky taste that can come off as infection.  so when moving the ph bar alot lactic is nice because as an organic acid its nice and bright and adds zing if nothing else. yeah sure in high quantities it tastes exactly like infection but it takes more to get there then phosphoric as far as my taste buds tell me.  citric acid is by far the best, but in the quantities id need it is prohibitively expensive.

for the chlorine we do one of two things, either carbon filter or just send it directly into the hot water system.  the hot water system runs hot enough that it scrubs the chlorine out well enough.  in my old brewery we would fill the kettle the night before and keep the steam on low and by morning the chlorine would be gone.

ON TOP of that, we also add CaSO4, calcium sulfate, not my fav brewing salt, but that's what they have always used so eh.  most of the recipes get some.  
in my old brewery we had the issue of the city using the river as its water source.  depending on the season and rain, salt content was all over the place.  we acidified as needed to get mash ph constant. for some beers we used a thing of burton salts from brewers supply group.  like teaspoon here or there.

a few recipes use salt, regular old salt.  kosher only, iodine is to be avoided.  i tell you what, salt can really bring some beers alive.  makes them sweeter-ish with out any cloying, or body to it.  doesn't really subdue hops but it kinda cuts the harshness.   bocks do well with a bit o salt.  did this too at the old brewery i was at.  seems this isnt known in the homebrew world.

i feel bad for breweries with worse water then what i got.  i know a few in mining regions where every drop of water that comes in has to go through a RO system, and back salted.  one guy has cobalt in his water.

well, for the beer i was making, that malt bill gets me 150bbl of 13.5 deg P wort.  hops in that one come out to about 13lb in the kettle, 14lb for later aroma addition,  and 4lb 8.4lb saaz in the whirlpool.  

system efficiency?  hmm....well heres the thing, there is a bit of a disconnect with pro-brewers and homebrewers,  ya'll use specific gravity, we use plato.  i get asked about efficiency alot and its not something we really look at.  we look at extract amount vs batch size.  yes yes, that is basically a measure of efficiency but its different.  how? well heres the thing, you look at efficiency as a direct measure of the amount of malt in, and then gravity.  homebrewers tend to look at gravity as a variable.  i ask you how your day went brewing and you might tell me you hit any number of degrees plato.  for me, thats a big no no.  gravity is a constant for me, i have to hit within .5 deg  every single time to be in spec, and i do it.  so for me, the variable is amount of wort produced.  and while it wouldnt be hard to get a number you could relate to, im not about to sit down and do the math. but normally the industry average is 90-95.  

and another thing.  you do realize that the efficiency number you get is based off of a congress mash? the congress mash is pretty old school and needs to be updated.  while its a good indicator of things. its just a system the ASBC and EBC came up with.  put it this way, coors with a mash press usually hits around 102-104 precent efficiency.

I did home brew before i was a brewer.  i made exacly 5 batches of a single porter recipe  on an all grain system.  the first 3 were dumpers.  i was totally not your typical homebrewer, i was trying to teach my self to brew.  i was a super bad beer dork before and loved beer, loved the idea of doing it for money too.  i spent enough time at breweries that i knew what the job entailed. knew i wanted to do it. i droped out of college with 8 credit hours left, sold everything i owned and did siebel.  the rest is history.

here's the thing, i used seibel to get my foot in the door at a brewery,  not my homebrewing. straight up, most pro brewers will look down on you if you come seeking work touting your homebrew experience.  your much more likely to get a job if you bring a willingness to do all manner of odd jobs,  work strange hours, and be a really cool dude. label bottles, pallet boxes, clean kegs, fill kegs, work as a tour guide, it all works.

Why the mystery where you work?

Public Image is everything these days. It would be nice to be truthful about beer I make, I can admit to flaws
And not have our marketing guy find out I dogged on my beer.  And if I remain a mystery I can dog on other breweries beer and not look as biased.  Plus, let's not forget most of the brewing industry is full of hippies and me posting on afrcom would make lots of em cry.  The owners politics do not match with arfcom, I wouldnt get fired over it but I don't need that talk.  And then there is just plain ole opsec.

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Were you involved in the "start up" operations of the plant?  Meaning, were you the home brewer who decided to give his recipes a crack professionally?  Or did you go to school to become a brew master and just run the brewing operation?  



Mostly just wondering what the path from home brewer to brew pub owner is like.

im a brewer, not a master brewer, not even a head brewer, or lead brewer.  in fact, when our brewmaster brews its kinda scary, he has no idea what hes doing on the system, he knows the science behind it, just not the mechanics of the brewery.  last time he did brew i came in to let him go home and he had this scared look on his face, and i knew it was bad, he double pitched a 150bbl batch of white ale with our house ale yeast and also with the usual white ale yeast.  bad stuff.  

im one of 3 guys who work the hot side, we have 2 cellar men, 2 filtration guys, one guy that does the special stuff and barrel aged stuff, and two lead brewers who are basically my supervisors who do material logistics and cover shifts.  

i was not involved in any start up, i know a few guys who went in with start up places and id never do it.  either someone pullls funding, never enough funding, crap business plan, crap beer, what ever, something keeps it from going anywhere, now you have a failed brewery on your resume.  and frankly, homebrew recipes never translate well into the pro side, maybe in spirit though.

and in that, i dont want to be a brew master,  i wanna brew, want to actually make beer.   brewmasters at most big breweries dont brew,  sam calagione would love for you to think he actually brews beer, but he dont.   we (the brew team) get to come up with recipes pretty often so i get my creative juices flowing enough.

being a brew pub owner is just like being the owner of any other business,  anything you think of as fun when it comes to homebrewing becomes work, becomes something you Have to do, becomes your livelyhood.  right now, if you make a bad batch, dump it and shrug your sholders, if you own a pub or brewery, its alot worse.

i know few if any owners what actaully do any brewing.   how it works ls this, you for some reason opened a brewery,  you may brew for like a year or two, but the business needs attention, so you hire an assistant, you do more business, and the assistant is more and more the brewer, you might have the title, but you do very little brewing.  your assistant, now head brewer, now leaves for some reason, you cant hire a homebrewer, you need a real brewer that can step in and hit the ground running,  so you hire someone wither either expierence or the schooling and drive.  thats where guys like me come in.  we have the passion for brewing, and thats all i wanna do.

What school did you go to?  
What type of beers does your brewery specialize in?
Do you homebrew?

This is a great post. Thanks, Dannofree!

Out of interest, what is your current list of favorite brews?

What is your prefered "macro" brew?

What breweries do you look up too?

Thanks!

ETA - And, why?

If you could work for any brewery in any position, what would it be?

You hit the nail on the head there!  

How many times have I heard, "This is great beer!  You should open a brewery!"

My response is always that I don't want my hobby to become my job!  (that, and running a brewery would be much, much more difficult to make the $$ that I make now.)

K

How much did your schooling cost and how long did it take?

my guess is some sort of carbon filtering and possibly a pH adjustment. Possibly add some minerals for taste.

ETA: should have read down further

2 questions from me....

First off, not asking to pry, but what kind of money is possible in that line of work?  I'd venture a guess that the master brewers are pretty well taken care of, but you have to work your way up a bit.

Secondly, a brewing question:  I've only done extract at home, and I've done some all grain at a friends house.  I'm hoping to make the jump over myself soon.  If time doesn't allow for a full brewday, would there be any disadvantage or downside to doing the mash on one night, and saving it for the next night to do your boil?

Thank you for posting your experience.  

I use RO water.   Before I went all grain I figured the extract makers were using the correct water so they already had what they needed mineral wise, as the minerals (probably) don't evaporate in the concentration process.  Now that I'm all grain I would like to doctor the water, and the salt addition seems really appealing.  My next brew is Saturday, and I'm going for the Trappist Rothefort 8 from the Clone Beers book.  This is a dark, heavy beer, starting with RO water what would you recommend for salt in a 5 gallon batch?

Same here! I tell them it is a whole lot different. Don't forget you guys have to keep anal records for the feds too.

Yeah, I know what you mean by the hippies/grungers.  I'm a BJCP judge.  But, there are a lot of us geeks too!

Any tips for us homebrewers?