Friday, Dec. 5

Hey-- A post from Jessica!! Good to see the little lady back to bloggin'. I am doing good here, just got done with two big double brew days. These are the second to last for the Keoki facility. We are scheduled to brew the last ones last next week. The brews went well for the most part, although we did have to unclog our heat exchanger after the first set of brews. When you transfer beer from the kettle to the fermenter, the beer is more than 200 degrees. We ferment our beers between 64 and 66 Degrees. So, we cool it down through a heat exchanger. It's cooled down through a series of plates. Well, after you run thousands of gallons of beer through one of these things, they can get clogged up with gunk, such as betaglucans - which are polysaccharides. We ran a chemical loop through the heat exchanger and all is well. Cleaning the heat exchanger out dramatically reduced our transfer time. After we were done brewing, I dropped Dave off at the airport and headed back to start cleaning. I spoke with the President and CFO of our company today after work, and my first official day in Hilo will be Monday, Dec. 22. I have my flight booked and a reservation at the Hilo Bay Hostel through Dec. 31. The women we are renting the home from are going to let me move in with them on Jan. 1. They leave for the mainland on Jan 12, one day before Jess gets here. Alright, it's time for a well-deserved cocktail. Aloha.