From brew day to the tap
Every beer on this site is at one of these steps. The status on the home page and on each beer's page tells you which one.
Brew Schedule
A brew day goes on the calendar. On the day, crushed grain soaks in hot water to make a sweet liquid called wort. The wort boils for about an hour while the hops go in, then it's chilled and run into a unitank. The yeast goes in, and the batch gets its name: the brew date plus the style, like 20261004_Saison.
On the site: Brew schedule and Events.
Fermenting
The yeast eats the sugar and makes alcohol and CO₂. A floating hydrometer in the tank reports the gravity (how much sugar is left) and the temperature every few minutes. On the home page, the bubbles in a tank show how hard the yeast is working.
- Fermenting The gravity is still dropping.
- Conditioning The gravity has stopped dropping, and the yeast is cleaning up the flavour before the beer goes cold.
- Crashing The tank is chilled close to freezing for about 3 days, so the yeast and haze settle out.
- Lagering Lagers stay cold for weeks to smooth out. We plan on 14 days.
- Carbonating CO₂ pressure on the cold tank is dissolving into the beer.
On the site: Fermenting list and the unitanks.
On Deck
The beer moves from the tank into kegs. Every keg has its own number, like K01, that stays with the keg wherever it goes. A keg's spot in a kegerator has a name too, like TAP-1, and that spot has its own scale and gas line.
- Carbonating In a kegerator, cold and under CO₂. It takes about 3 days to get fizzy, so the ready-by date is the keg date plus 3 days.
- Conditioning Carbonated and waiting its turn in a kegerator. It's also Conditioning when the keg sits outside a kegerator, for example carbonating on its own, and then its location is Room Temp.
On the site: On deck list and the keg pictures.
On Tap
The keg is in a kegerator at serving temperature, carbonated and hooked to a tap. The Primary Kegerator has three taps, TAP-1 to TAP-3 from left to right. The Secondary Kegerator has a spot for each of its three kegs but only one tap. When the same beer is in more than one keg, the On Tap list says there's another keg On Deck.
On the site: Kegs on tap list.
Past batches
When the last keg is empty, the beer stays in Beers with its recipe, numbers and fermentation chart. Kegs taken to a pop-up are listed under Events with how much was poured. If the recipe is on the brew schedule again, the beer's page says so.
On the site: Beers, Recipes and Events.
Ready-by dates
Ready-by dates are estimates, worked out every 10 minutes from the latest readings:
- In a keg: the day it was kegged plus 3 days to carbonate.
- In a unitank: the days left fermenting, based on how fast the gravity is dropping toward the expected final gravity, plus 2 days steady, 3 days crashing, 14 days lagering for a lager, and 3 days carbonating in a keg.
If a number the estimate needs isn't recorded, the date shows N/A.