Kurt also showed us how the process had to be watched pretty constantly to maintain a proper liquid level in the lautering vessel for the correct balance of liquid and grain. If the grain dried up, they’d run into grain bed compaction trouble again. Peg Leg is one of Clipper City’s bigger beers with over 4,400 lbs of grain in the mash. (About as much grain as they can fit!) That stuff needs to keep floating if you want to keep liquid flowing through it. The grains included your standard 2-Row, Munich 30, Roast Barley, Black Patent Malt, and Chocolate Malt. I thought that was a pretty complex grain bill for a commercial beer. It reminded me a lot of a homebrew-style stout. Respect!
Mike pours in a secret ingredient
And that was actually one of the neat things about Clipper City. They still have homebrewing roots. Prior to brewing commercially, Kurt’s only experience was as a homebrewer. Apparently the morning brewer was also a homebrewer. According to Kurt, Hugh likes to hire homebrewers because of their enthusiasm. You’ve gotta really love brewing beer to put up with all the cleaning, I’d bet.
Kurt said most of his job involved cleaning fermentation vessels and things, but he let us do a few fun parts like pouring in some adjunct sugar needed to get the gravity up super high and dumping in some hops. Andrew even got to climb in to the Lauter tun and clean it out! Kurt’s job involved a lot of multitasking–watching the boil, grinding more grain for next week’s brew, cleaning out fermenter by rigging up various hoses of water or caustic solutions, and driving forklifts to get more sacks of grain.
Andrew in the lauter tun
After Andrew finished cleaning up the mess, we snooped around the brewery a bit and found casks of real ale-some spiked with locally grown hops. Beyond the pirate-rebel vibe, the homebrewer roots and the general goodness of their beers, the other neat thing about Clipper City was that they are indeed local. Their cask beers spiked with locally grown East Coast hops was just another way to send that message home. When we saw those shiny barrel shaped kegs while sipping on some freshly poured glassed of Peg Leg Imperial Stout, we couldn’t help but hope that some of the local distribution channels would put those beers on a few of our local taps.
mmm Casks...
You can take your own brewery tour at Clipper City every weekend on Saturdays at 1:00 and 2:30. Click here to reserve tickets. The brewery is located at 4615 Hollins Ferry Rd., Suite B in Baltimore, MD. Click below to see more photos from our day at Clipper City…
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- Fermenters
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- Kettle
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- Andrew adds hops
Tags: Baltimore, Clipper City Brewing, Hugh Sisson, Peg Leg Stout
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Great piece Mike. Awesome pics too.
And not only does Hugh like to hire homebrewers, he also lets them put their creative side to good use; because I’m 90% positive Kurt is the one who designed many of CC’s beautiful label art!