Happy Brew Year!
2018 is officially in the books and for those of us working the Black Dog Brewery dream, it’s been a whirlwind. We announced the brewery in January 2018, had our first investor event in March (we have another one coming up so if you’re interested in owning a piece of Black Dog Brewing Company check out our events page and RSVP), bought some great equipment, signed our lease and now we’re getting ready to start renovation. It was an amazing start for Black Dog Brewing Company and we’re carrying that momentum right into 2019. In fact, we’re starting off 2019 by ordering the remainder of our brewing equipment. To celebrate that milestone, I thought it would be fun to give you all a run down of the magical equipment that makes beer possible.
The Brew House
If you’ve been following us for long, you know our very first capital equipment purchase was our 20 BBL brew house. 20 BBL’s means we can brew about 630 gallons of beer at one time. Many craft 
breweries start on smaller systems but when you have an award winning head brewer making the beer, you’d better have enough for everybody.
The brew house consists of a mash tun and a boil kettle. The mash tun is where the grain steeps in hot water before moving over to the boil kettle. Once this beer tea (called “wort”) goes to the boil kettle, we’ll get it up to boiling temp, add in hops and whatever special additions the recipe calls for, and let it boil for about an hour, depending on the recipe. Our specific brew house from Premier Stainless, picture on the right, automates a lot of the details and makes it far easier to brew consistent quality beer.
Hot and Cold Liquor Tanks
Okay, so a couple of disclaimers. Number one, this is not the most sexy part of the brewing equipment list and number two, “liquor” in brewing means water. So if you’re reading this thinking, “holy shit. they put vodka in their beer!” just hold on a second. 
These are basically hot and cold water tanks.
We need a ton of hot and cold water during the brewing process, which means each tank will be double the capacity (40 BBL’s) of our brew house. What will we use so much water for? Well, water has to be preheated for the mash process, we need hot water to clean, etc. We’ll use the cold water to quickly chill the wort after the boil, spray down insubordinate brewery workers, etc. In order to make this happen, the hot liquor tank is heated with steam and the cold water tank is cooled with glycol.
The tank pictured on the left is not ours but an example of what the tanks look like. Once in our brewery, they’ll be nestled up right alongside our brew house.
Fermentation Tanks
So if the hot and cold liquor tanks aren’t sexy, then the fermentation tanks are borderline pornographic. This, my friends, is where the proverbial magic happens. Once the beer has finished boiling and is cooled down, it heads on over to the fermentation tanks. Here we’ll add the yeast and the soon-to-be-beer will spend about 14 days, depending on the beer style, in fermentation.
Some tanks can be pretty fancy with temperature controls and electronic parts that allow us to keep an eye on what’s happening during fermentation. Once we begin brewing Kuntz’s Old German Lager, we’ll need a fermentation tank that can drop the temperature down to about 58 degrees.
Our fermentation tanks will be similar to the tanks pictured, just a little larger in order to handle the 20 BBL capacity of the brew house.
Brite Tanks
Brite beer tanks are like the on-deck circle in the brewery. Once the beer finishes up in the fermentation tanks, it’s moved over to our brite tanks where a couple of things happen. First, the beer gets carbonated through the use of what’s called a carbonation stone – a hollow cylinder that pushes CO2 through tiny holes, directly into the beer. As the beer sits in the brite tanks, it also tends to refine over the course of the next week, allowing some of the particulate matter to fall out as well as maturing a bit in taste.
From here, we can run our tap lines and serve directly from the tanks – our set up for the Black Dog tap room will serve a few of our top selling beers this way. We’ll also fill our kegs from the brite tanks. This allows the beer to carbonate and refine in the brite tank so when our customers receive the kegs, the beer is fresh and ready to go.
That’s the bulk of our equipment however, there a few other items, like the keg washer and boiler, which are even less sexy than the hot and cold liquor tanks. Right now in the industry, fabrication times are in the 3 to 6 month window once our order is placed, so you’ll have to wait until March before you see the pictures. At least you have something to look forward to!
In the meantime, I believe Shawn is putting Shelby Dog IPA on the brewing schedule. Check our social media for updates on the brew! Speaking of IPA’s – on the local scene there are some good ones but one of my go to IPA’s is Daredevil Liftoff. Give it a swing next time your out and if you’re looking for a craft beer excursion, the Daredevil brewery in Speedway is a great place to enjoy some brews.
subscribe with your email below and get all the black dog brewing company updates!
Subscribe below to get all the latest Black Dog news and updates. Once you’ve signed up, make sure to check your spam folder occasionally. You don’t want to miss out on updates due to an overzealous spam filter!
