Behind the Scenes II 

Last time we took a tour of the bottling line – we figured it wasn’t prudent to ignore the other side of packaging – Racking.   Racking, or kegging, is a great way for us to get beer into your glasses. When we opened in 1986, you could only get Extra Pale Ale in a keg at a few local pubs.   Today, about 50% of our beer is put into kegs for your enjoyment.   I find the keg line fascinating – and though the guys who do the racking (rackers) are a bit camera-shy – I was able to capture the process of putting EPA in a keg!  We own our own kegs; our kegs have a Summit Brewing Company sticker around the center.  We keg in three different sizes, ½ barrels (15.5 gallons) ¼ barrels (7.75 gallons) and 1/6 barrels (5.16 gallons).   All these kegs are made from stainless steel and we have kegs that have been filled for over 13 years.

Our kegging line was purchased in Germany, there are all sorts of fantastic German words printed on it.  Two folks operate the line, the unsung heroes of a delicious craft beer pour.  A keg is sent down the line about every minute – though a keg takes 10 minutes to complete the full cycle.  

The first step is receiving the kegs back from homes, bars and restaurants.  You can see keg mountain in the photo above – these will be filled with beer by tomorrow.    One of the rackers places a keg – upside-down – on the rack.  The reason it is upside-down is that all the cleaning and filling is through the coupler on the top of the keg.   The first step is simply an external keg-washer, we don’t know where they have been (sometimes we don’t want to know) and we want to make sure the outside is clean.

The second portion of the kegging line is where all the action happens.   This is where the keg is first emptied (yes, sometimes beer is left behind), then it is cleaned by a caustic, then an acid and finally with hot steam.    This is going to leave the keg absolutely clean and ready to be filled with delicious beer.   

The final step involves the keg being filled from the bottom to the top with beer and set on the conveyer belt to be weighed (to make sure it is filled perfectly).   It then gets flipped over and loaded onto a pallet by one of the rackers.   They have an arm that takes some of the 160 pounds of keg weight – but for many years these folks used their pure brawn to lift the keg onto those pallets.  

They also put a paper collar on the keg that tells us, and you, how long the keg is good for. The kegs of EPA below are fresh until May 28^th 2012 – 150 days.   So drink up!

Many people ask about the carbonation and how the beer gets out of the keg.   Kegs are filled and held under pressure to keep the dissolved C02 in the beer.  When a bar taps a keg – it uses C02 to push the beer out of the keg.   Basically, the C02 displaces the beer which has nowhere to go but up the center spike in the keg, up the line, out of the tap and into your glass.   The C02 keeps the beer fresh and pressurized for the time it is in the cooler.  Now, you might have experience with a “pump-action” tap at a party.   This is fine for a party – however – you are displacing the beer with OXYGEN when you use this pump.   Oxygen + Beer = cardboard tasting not-so-tasty beer.    SO – if you use that pump – make sure you invite enough guests to finish the keg that night!

I hope that gives you an insight into how Summit gets from our tanks to your pint at the bar – yum.

Cheers,
Betsy