It’s going to be a brite, brite, brite, sun shiny day at Printer’s Ale! And a long day of unloading beer tanks out of semi-trucks (exhausted). Our brite tanks and fermentors just made the long journey from Germany to the U.S. by boat and then by truck from Savannah, GA to Carrollton, GA. The 4000+ mile boat trip probably started in Hamburg and began its slow trek across the Atlanta ocean, along with many other goods being shipped around the world. The shipping boat ended up in the Mid-Atlantic of the coast of GA and ported in Savannah. After that, our shipping containers were loaded onto trucks and driven west down I-16 to Macon and then over to Carrollton in West Georgia. Where they showed up at our loading dock at Printer’s Ale.
2nd Truck docking
It was long day, but we knocked it out, and now we have probably 80% of our biggest equipment here in Carrollton. There were a couple times when we were unloading that I kept picturing some German worker loading up our tanks in the containers and after safely putting the tanks shutting the doors and exclaiming “Es ist Amerika Probleme jetzt” or roughly “It’s America’s problem now” as they watched the ship sail away.
Because, they really squeezed these babies into the shipping containers. It took several guys, a fork-lift, and a lot of sweat to get them off the trucks safely. If you ever find yourself purchasing brewing equipment (or any large equipment) and having it shipped to you I recommend that you find out who is loading it and ask them when they instal it to put down spacers. That way you can get the forks of a lift, or jack under what you need to lift and unload. Oh well #learningcurve.
Fermenters and Brite tanks have been around for a long time. The original old world tanks were open aired vessels. Today, fermenters come in many variations, but the most common you’ll see are cylindrical structures with a conical bottom to collect yeast. The vary greatly in size from 1bbl tanks to 6,000bbls (31gallons = 1bbl). We purchased four 40 bbl vessels and they will be holding a lot of Printer’s Ale, and maybe some lagers haha (see what I did there). Fermenters are the vessels used during the process of converting sugars to alcohol via yeast. You can get a much more in-depth explanation of what fermentation is here. We still have to have the floor in the brewhouse epoxied so are vessels are all still “wrapped” up but here is a picture of the fermenters we bought when they were still in Germany.
40bbl Ferms
Can’t wait to see the tanks all stood up and ready to go in the brewery. It will only be a couple weeks later I’ll be talking about some Printer’s Ale.
