virtual tour

matt and i finally got around to bringing a camera in to take pictures of the brewery. since i've been hanging out there quite a bit, i have gained somewhat of an understanding of how it all works. i'll try to explain to the best of my limited knowledge what all these pictures are:

this is the main room. it's what you see when you come in the door. there is a "bar" (kegerator) in the middle of the room where people can "taste"(sit and drink all day long) the beer. look, there's me! i'm sitting on a keg a few feet away from someone's stinky work boots. the room in the background to the right with the door off it's hinges is the bathroom. the door is on now. and the bar is up against a wall now, looking more organized and respectable.

this is the front of the brewery. that tall thing in front is the grain silo. that's where the grain delivery people come and put the grain, which then goes from the bottom of the silo through that white pipe that looks like a roller coaster into the building through the roof. that other tall thing in front is matt. :)

this is the mill room and grist case. the mill room is the little closet-y looking thing with a machine in it. the machine, obviously, is the mill. the grain gets milled, then goes up another white pipe into that box to the right which is the grist case, where the mash (what the milled grain seems to be called) is stored.

this is my beautiful man standing next to the mashtun. (note: mashtun is actually all one word. i had it spelled mash ton, and then mash tun, and neither seemed right, so i called matt who said it is "mashtun.") in this picture matt's standing on the brew deck smiling for the camera. normally he's standing on the brew deck in work boots and latex gloves, stirring the mash (the milled grain from the last picture) into the mashtun with a giant oar. though i think there's a machine on there that does that part now, too.

the concoction with the water and mash then goes into this thing which is the kettle. this is where the hops go in, too. it all gets boiled. it's actually quite a bit like cooking. i don't know why the picture is sideways. when i loaded them into my computer i tried to make them all orient the same way, but i must have missed this one. sorry about having to tilt your head.

in the background of this picture are the mashtun and the kettle. in the foreground are the fermenters, where the mixture--now called wort--is piped to finish the fermentation process. first it goes through a wort chiller and (sometimes, but not in this case yet) some sort of filtering process. the wort sits in the fermenters until it becomes beer. there are now six of these in the brew house: the little one and three big ones in this picture, and two new giant ones that are going to be used to make lagers.

this is the boiler room (the closet-y thing with the hot water heater in it), the hot liquor back (the other hot-water-heater-y thing), and the power box. i'm not really sure what this equipment is for other than to supply and control power to the building, and to provide boiling water for the kettle.

these big things are called bright tanks. they're stored inside the cooler. they are where the beer goes once it is done being fermented in the fermenters from a few pictures ago. beer sits in there partially just as storage but mainly because the longer it sits in there the "brighter" it gets. all the particles and stuff that made it through whatever filtering process settle out and the beer is less cloudy. so far there are four bright tanks at ninkasi. the fourth you can only see a little corner of. for whatever reason it sits long-ways instead of upright, and it is big and pinkish-red with a snout-like opening on one end. they call it "the pig."

here are a bunch of kegs, also inside the cooler. after the beer is done sitting in the bright tanks, it gets put into kegs. the cooler is the most wonderful thing on a hot summer day. just walk in, close your eyes, and you can imagine you are up on mt. hood during ski season!

this is...another picture that didn't get uprighted when i put it into my computer. it is also a picture of a ninkasi tap handle. this specific one is quantum pale ale, my new favorite beer. the other beers are total domination ipa, spank dog, and believer double red. coming soon are two lagers and an oktoberfest (matt is designing that one and he's going to enter it for competition at the great american beer festival in october). look for this tap handle at your local bar (if you live in oregon). it's already all over eugene and some places in portland, and growing daily...