Bar Buzz

Its been an interesting week or so here at the Chandos. First, Neil ha been teaching me about taking care of the casks of ale down in the cellar. This is special beer. Its what is called a "real ale" which means its never been pasteurized so it has live yeast in it, its hasn't been filtered, its hand pumped, and its in a big oak barrel. So, it takes some special care. All the other beers use compressed gas to push the beer up to the bars, but since this is made of wood, that won't work. It also means that a lot more has to be done to make sure that its going to come out right on the other end. First, you have to tap the keg in a specific manner. First you put the tap in with a hammer, old school style. Than you need to release some of the built up pressure from the yeast. Finally you need to open up a hole on top so the pressure can equalize as you pull it out. If you don't that all right, things can get busy. Once I did it in the reverse order and got a face full of beer. Another time, okay a couple, I didn't drive the tap in far enough so I ended up with beer on my feet.

One that all has been done, you have to be really careful with the casks. They add a special chemical to settle everything out of the beer so it pours clear. If you shake the casks too much, you ruin the barrel of ale. Not good. There is a crust of yeast at the top to worry about and than sediment on the bottom that needs to be kept out. Neil showed me the right way to rack the casks too. Since you can't disturb the casks once they've been tapped, sometime we have to keep the barrels in a separate space until we've emptied a rack. I suppose that doesn't sound to hard, but the casks weigh a quarter of ton. Not small. You also have to take a couple of steps to make sure it will clarify right since it hasn't been set they way it needs to be.

So that's been a lot of fun. The other stuff, not so much. One of the couples who was going to be leaving this weekend had been taking some liberties with the stock and they happened to get caught this week. Woops. So they got the boot and we got a couple more people to work with, from Yankton. Yes, we know have three South Dakotans working here. I haven't had much of chance to talk to them yet, just enough to know where they're from and that I think we graduated the same year. I have to say that I was pretty floored.