Two Brother's Brewing

By virtue of pure laziness, meaning not posting about my visit to Two Brothers Brewery right away, I am going to be able to combine two different events into what will probably turn into a sweet, but lengthy post. Both are Two Brothers related, so it is almost like I planned it.

Two Brothers Brewery Visit ~

I had a good pace of brewery visits going (three in one week) and have since trailed off, probably because there aren't too many more breweries that are close. This post is about the biggest brewery I have visited to date, Two Brothers Brewing in Warrenville.

The brewery tour at Two Bros was easily the best small brewery tour that I have ever been on (I can't compare this to Guinness or Heineken because those two tours will knock your socks off). The guide had a well prepared, fun presentation for the group of about 25 people. It is tough to call it a tour, because we really just stood in two different spots and listened to him talk, but good none the less. He covered all of the basics while going into enough depth that I was probably one of the only people who really understood everything he was talking about. I'm not trying to brag, but he did say somethings that I had just learned last week and I am in a brewing school. I have some pictures below and the captions will talk a little more about what is going on at Two Bros.

Bottling machine in the foreground (140 bottles per minute), Fermenters/Bright Tanks in the background

100 bbl fermenters

Now I have a little video clip I took while in the brewery, it is the new high tech gadgetry that was suppose to blow you away, but I can't figure out how to do any video editing on my computer. Hopefully a future clip will have some text pointing things out, maybe some music or me doing a little voice over. Technology has gotten the best of me this time, so I will do a quick narration before the clip. The first tanks are up close on the fermenters, then I pan over to the 50 bbl, three vessel brewing system (mash, lauter and brew kettle) with a brief cameo from Tom, Gloria and Brendon (Thanks for taking me out there). The door in the corner leads to the mill. Then it pans back over the fermenters and the rest of the brewery space (tons of kegs).

Not going to win an Oscar for cinematography for that one, I will work on it in the future. A few things that I want to touch on more, the mill and the brewing system. They have some cool things going on with the mill that you can't see on the video. Their grain silo for the base malt is located outside at the other end of the building. Instead of weighing out the malt and carrying it into the mill, they can input the amount of malt they need and it will be pumped into the mill on a screw conveyor. Note: a base malt is one that makes up the majority of the grain bill for any beer the brewery, it is generally a two-row barley and will be used as the base for all (there are exceptions) of the beers made at the brewery. The malt is then milled along with the specialty grains and pumped (another screw conveyor) up to the grain hopper above the mash. From there it is dropped into the mash when necessary. I really like the concept of the automated screw conveyor to bring in the base malt, but they still need to work on a method for the specialty malts which are hand measured and carried into the mill. I have been thinking about grain use and storage in a brewery for a while and have a similar concept in mind, but could end up using the idea for the base malt because of the volume that needs to be move and stored. Since specialty malts are used in relatively small quantities, my thoughts are to have them stored in hoppers above the mill room with a feed system into the mill. That is a short explanation of my vision, but the idea is point-of-use for all of the malts. Should also help with inventory control and involves a lot less moving of the 50 lb malt bags. I guess the imaginary...I mean industrial engineer in me will never die, probably not a bad thing though.

Leads me to my next topic, the brewing system. I mentioned that they have a three vessel system, comparatively Metropolitan and Emmett's used a two vessel and large breweries will have six vessels. The name of the game with brewery vessel quantity is capacity, the more vessels you have the more beer you can make because you have dedicated vessels for different operations. There is little reason for a small brewer to have anything more than a two vessel system. I don't really agree with Two Brothers needing a three vessel system, but they are getting to be a pretty big brewery and could need the capacity down the line (I also don't have the financial analysis that should have been associated with that decision). What really caught my attention with the three vessel system is that they are mash, lauter, brew kettle/whirlpool, where other brewers that I have talked to said that the brew kettle/whirlpool is generally the bottleneck (I know I haven't talked about the whirlpool portion of the process, but trust me it is important). There are plenty of ways to increase capacity (or think you are), but unless you are focused at the bottleneck then you are really just wasting money. It is very early to worry about any of this because even with a two vessel system you can make a lot of beer and still not have to brew everyday. I guess my point is that making a great beer is important for a brewery to be successful, but if you want to make a profit there are a lot more things to think about. I am not trying to knock Two Brothers, because they are obviously a successful brewery and make great beer, but there is always ways to be better.

I am getting to be very long winded...but wait there is more

Two Brothers Beer Tasting ~

Between the brewery tour, drinking at home and a beer sampling at Brasseri Jo I have been able to sample a good portion of the Two Brothers beer portfolio. Here are some of my thoughts on the various beers I tried:

After the tour, we got to choose 3 different beers to sample. I kept it hoppy and sampled their Heavy Handed IPA, Cane and Ebel Hopped Up Red-Rye and Cask-Conditioned Bitter End (I will go into cask-conditioning another time). I enjoyed the Heavy Handed and Bitter End, but just couldn't really get into the Cane and Ebel. If you haven't had a rye beer before, they are an acquired taste (one that I am yet to acquire). The Cane and Ebel is one of their more popular beers, so I will have to give it a second chance sometime.

On Monday, when I actually started writing this post, I was typing with the help of the Bonfire Dunkel Weiss. This is one of the beers from their Artisan Series, similar to what I mentioned in an earlier post as the Payette Brewing "Ales of No Return." So a small batch, one-off beer that is only available in bombers (22 oz bottles, bombers just sound way cooler). I thought this beer was more along the lines of an American Dark Wheat than a traditional German Dunkel Weiss, but still tasty.

Thanks to a heads up from Cindy via Greg, Matt and I went to Brasseri Jo on Tuesday for a Two Brothers beer tasting. As the name might suggest, it was a pretty swanky french restaurant. Since I am such a nice guy, I went ahead and treated Matt to the tasting. Could have been the best dollar I have ever spent; we got to sample four beers, got appetizers, heard from Jason Ebel (Owner/Brewer) and at the end had the chance to pick the brains of Jason and a guy who runs Windy City Distribution. A lot of the information and ideas that came from those conversations will come in a subsequent post about distribution. The first beer we had was their flagship Domaine Dupage, a french country ale. I could see why it is their most popular beer because it had a lot of flavor but was very drinkable. We also had their Northwind Imperial stout and two more beers from their Artisan collection, Red Eye Coffee Porter and Bare Tree Weiss Wine. Red Eye was a solid coffee beer that Matt really enjoyed. We also got to try their 2008 Weiss Wine right out of the bright tank, it wont be released for a few more weeks which was really cool. We also picked up a 2001 Weiss Wine to drink alongside the 2008 when it comes out, so look for that post in a few weeks.

All in all I think that Two Brothers makes great beer and has a great facility. If you made it through this post, congratulations, I think I already forgot what I wrote about at the start. Funny to think how getting me to write a paper is school was like pulling teeth, let me write about beer and you can't shut me up.