Beer is 90+% water by weight. Brewery cleaning and sanitation is essential to consistently great craft beer and also requires a healthy amount of clean, hot water. With these two facts in mind, the brewery upgrade we installed yesterday, while not as flashy as big, shiny, new 80 bbl tanks or a larger boil kettle, is just as exciting to us. Two new Bosch OnDemand water heaters now reside on the back wall of the Drake’s Brewery capable of continuously supplying us with up to 175 degree water, and thereby allowing us to keep our hot liquor tank consistently full and ready for another brew.

Before these heaters, we had to dip into our hot liquor supply for both brewing purposes and for the necessary cleaning steps following each brew, so by the end of the day (3 batches on average), our hot water was gone. Therefore, to allow ourselves the option of going beyond the 3rd brew in a day, we needed a way to keep the hot water flowing.

Enter our good friend Taylor Shaw, Bosch representative and coincidentally a big fan and friend of craft beer and Drake’s and her associate Tara McNamara. She came in yesterday with her crew and had the heaters installed and ready in no time. Now, our brew day can go the distance, perhaps eventually into 24 hour rotations. Long story short, endless hot water = potential for endless Drake’s beers.

As you can see, Jesse is quite happy about the addition. After the install, we all decided it was time to celebrate with a beer.