Sometimes what we surround ourselves with can represent who we are. In the case of Short’s these things can be weird. Here are some examples!
1. Mother Ship– FV15 fermentation vessel has larger legs than any other fermentation vessel on the Short’s Brewing Company’s property. Since this vessel beamed down from somewhere unknown and quite high above planet earth, we felt it was only appropriate to christen it with the name, The Mother Ship.
*Fermenting is when the liquid wort turns to beer. In these vessels, yeast is added to the wort and consumes the sugars turning their by-product into CO2 and alcohol.
2. [Auto]clave-on Barksdale FKA Old Thunder Belly– This hunk of burning metal sits in our Quality Control lab. The name, [Auto]clave-on Barksdale, originates from our Quality Manager’s obsession with the show, The Wire. This equipment is an Autoclave and it sterilizes the instruments used in the lab for beer testing. We pride ourselves in producing quality, clean beer, and nothing would be worse than taking that clean beer and dirtying it up with testing equipment… so we raise our glasses to [Auto]clave-on Barksdale (and the the quality managers who make him run) so that no sample is wrongly tested!
3. The Mangler– This crazy, and slightly scary, looking piece of machinery ensures that your beer gets from the store to your fridge in once piece… well six pieces that is. This is our 6-pack erector and it pops open each and every 6-pack holder we fill. The nickname came about when Skinny, AKA Nick Fairbanks, was working on getting it back up and running after a small breakdown ensued. The machine seemed to have a deep fascination with Skinny’s hands and as you can see… the apparatus was quickly dubbed, The Mangler.
4. Sasquatch AKA Blueberry Jodi– This fine and voluptuous grundy conditions experimental beers produced at the Elk Rapids Production site. If our brewers have the itch to get a little wild and try a new yeast strain or style of beer, they brew it up in smaller batches and let it condition here. The name, Sasquatch, came about when our fine young Filler Operator, Kody Koerber, proposed a beer idea that was ultimately named, Sasquatch Named Codini. The beer was originally conditioned in this grundy so we thought it was only right that a picture of Kody be plastered to its side, blessing it with the name Sasquatch.
*Conditioning is when the beer naturally brightens by allowing the leftover suspended matter to settle to the bottom of the tank, and CO2 is forced into the tank so the beer is at the right carbonation level.
5. Ronnie James Dio– This piece of equipment ensures that we send good tasting beer to the people of planet earth! It measures the dissolved oxygen in beer and provides the oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations for both the headspace and liquid in bottles. In the industry we shorten Dissolved Oxygen to DO. Since DO sounds like Dio, the name just magically evolved.
These five pieces of hardware are just a handful of the many we use, love, and name at Short’s. We couldn’t brew the outrageous beers that we do without them, so cheers to technology and the innovation that stems from it!
