Bronze Age Brew Blog: My first professional brew!

Hello there special friends! My life has been quite hectic as of late due to moving in to my new beautiful apartment with my beautiful girlfriend. While this has prevented me from posting on here, it hasn't stopped me from drinking a plethora of beer. The most exciting beer-related venture I engaged in recently was standing in on a brew at Cape Ann Brewing Company in scenic Gloucester, MA. This was the first of many breweries I queried, to allow me to do such a thing (much less reply), so I was incredibly grateful for the privilege. Dylan, the brewer, was mega helpful and allowed me to listen to all the shitty 80's cock rock that my little heart desired.
Some quick background: Cape Ann Brewing Co. was started in 2004 by a stock broker turned brewer, Jeremy Goldberg. The brewery utilizes a 20 BBL system. The beer that is brewed at their Gloucester location is for serving in the attached brewpub and and at numerous locations throughout the northeast. Their bottled beer is brewed at Mendocino Brewing Co. in Saratoga Springs, NY. Dylan worked in the restaurant business for a number of years and got into homebrewing with his friend TJ, now sales manager at Cape Ann. This eventually lead him to the company as well.
We started off the day at 8 AM when I was informed that we would be brewing pumpkin stout. I was also informed that this beer was Dylan's arch nemesis due to its tendency for stuck mashes. The last time he brewed a batch of this beer, the sparge took a sluggish 5 hours. Because of this, rice hulls were the first component to be added to the mash tun. These were to act as a filter bed that the wort could escape through. These do not affect the flavor of the beer in anyway.

The next step was milling the grain, which consisted of about 80% pale ale malt, some roasted barley and a small amount of flaked oats. We also tossed about five pounds of pumpkin flesh in. I would have thought this step was reserved for the boil. While we mashed, we scrubbed down the kettle in preparation for the transfer and boil. Luckily the sparge didn't take five hours, more like half. It still called for some back pumping to clear out the gunk from the lines however. In the time that this took, we sanitized the fermentation tank. I quickly learned that sanitation comprised about 90% of brewing, the rest is about 5% thumb twiddling and 5% brewing itself.
After sparging, we finally got down to the boil. Nothing was added until the end when we threw in the spices, chinook hops and kopakleer tablets for clarity. While we waited to add these components we engaged in the INCREDIBLY fun task of graining out. Dylan popped open the hatch on the side of the mash tun and we shoveled all the grain into a large bin so that the man known as "Farmer Pete" could come and retrieve it for his animals. At this point, the day was mostly over. When the boil was finished, we transfered the wort into the primary fermenter and oxygenated it as we did so. This was to ensure the yeasts success and rapid activity. In the first stages of fermentation, yeast is aerobic, thus requiring this oxygen. When it begins to process the sugars however, it becomes anaerobic.
All in all I had a total blast brewing at Cape Ann. I have to thank Dylan for making all this possible and being such a welcoming, helpful and all around stand up dude. I'll definitely be getting back up there as soon as possible to continue learning and to listen to Ratt and Skid Row records all day long (prepare yourself Dylan).

Some other fun stuff I learned.
-How to measure carbonation with a Zahm & Nagel volume meter or as Dylan calls it, a "Zahmbinater"
-For easy retrieval, storage and transfer, Cape Ann's yeast is kept in kegs
-Adding more yeast will simply cause fermentation to happen faster, not produce more booze as I had thought. To create more alcohol, create more sugar by upping your grain to water ratio in the mash
-Drinking lots of beer the night before brewing is TOTALLY detrimental, despite what you might think
-An auger is used to transfer the freshly milled grain up to the mash tun. It's essentially an Archimedes Screw.
-Baker's lung is totally messed up. Wear a mask when milling!