First Brew

We (successfully) brewed our first commercial brew today on the 30 hl system. We brewed the Trader's Brown Ale. I had help from Ben (our new assistant brewer) and Ernest (my Contractor/home brewer friend), we were even visited by the Brewmaster from Tiger next door (Juan) and the General manager for APBS (Alan). They both hung out for a while and helped us put the Gula Malaka (palm sugar - pictured here) into the brew kettle. It is nice to have friends drop by and help out a bit. It was a bit of a challenging day, including (but not limited to) 4 burst air lines, missing raw materials, a caustic shower (because I am not yet familiar with which valves should never be opened in sequence), a nonfunctional automated water mixing device, boiling water down the boot, the shifting of the mini brewery to downtown, a semi-functional wort cooling system and assorted acid/caustic burns. It took about 12 hours - but we brewed beer ! It felt great to finally brew beer on this system. And we plan on shaving about 3 hours off tomorrows brew (he said hopefully).