We Make Beer by Sean Lewis

Author:Sean Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250017796
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

7

“THE MOST IMPORTANT THING”

PROVIDING FOR FAMILY

There was no beating Andris to the brewery. If an intern arrived and he wasn’t there, then he had gone out and was coming back. In the dark of winter, well before the sun rose to offer whatever meager warmth it could to Canton, Andris was at Blue Hills preparing the brewery for the day’s work.

Brewers are no strangers to early shifts, or even overnight shifts, but Blue Hills was still young, and there was no need to cram in several brew sessions into a single day. In the first year of operating, Andris brewed mostly on Thursdays. A busy week meant brewing twice, with the other days spent filtering, kegging, bottling, or cleaning. A brew session rarely lasted much longer than six hours, a slow pace by most standards, so there was little practical reason for Andris to arrive so early. Of course, when it comes to family, practicality rarely has any bearing at all.

On brew days Andris had been up since sometime before five a.m. His morning rituals went unseen, as he was the only one awake, but it involved breakfast and coffee before heading toward Turnpike Street and continuing the short drive to the brewery. Inside, and still alone, the slowly waking brewmaster went through a checklist of items for the day. The first step was turning on the boiler. The boiler generated the steam that was pumped through the jacketed kettle and hot liquor tank (the large tank of water used to provide hot water, called “liquor,” for the mash and sparge). After a cold night in the cavernous warehouse space, the water in the tank took a while to reach the proper temperature1 and needed the early start for the morning’s session. After checking over the inventory to make sure that there were sufficient ingredients for that day’s brew, Andris was back in his black SUV headed for home.

At home, just waking up, was the reason Andris went to work so early. His wife, Alysa, was getting ready for work and minding their oldest son, Talis. With the brewery still too young to turn a profit, Andris and the Veidis family were living off his savings and Alysa’s salary as a nurse practitioner. With the sun now up, Andris helped make sure Talis got his breakfast and took him to Alysa’s parents nearby for daycare. If he had time, he would take his two dogs out to the park to play a quick game of fetch. Then, it was back to the brewery. More often than not, it was all accomplished before a single employee or intern made it in. A couple of years down the road, Andris and Alysa would repeat this routine with their second son, Maris, and daughter Sondeila. By the time an assistant brewer stumbled in around nine a.m., Andris was full of pep.

“What’s the matter? You tired?”

And if an issue with Talis arose—if he was missing an essential item that his grandparents could not locate—Andris would leave the brew session in the hands of his assistant to sort things out.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.