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Ask the Brewer Question of the Month for December 2006
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Question of the Month for DECEMBER 2006: Q: How do you maintain the consistency in brewing so that each bottle of IPA or UFO or even the new Raspberry UFO tastes like the one before? - Jeff (Hingham, MA) Mike Smith again answers this month's question. "Consistency is the name of the game in craft brewing and we spend lots of time and effort in order to maintain it. We have a rather extensive Quality Control / Quality Assurance program at Harpoon. We monitor many parameters at all points in the brewing process, from the malt in our silo to the beer in your glass."  "As an example, in our brewhouse [see photo at right] (that’s the four vessels in which we cook the malt and hops) we measure the pH and specific gravity (density) nine different times. We also measure the temperature and specific gravity on every beer in our fermenting tanks on a daily basis. This allows us to verify that the yeast is doing its job and the beer is aging (conditioning) properly.""Additionally, we have a well-appointed QC/QA laboratory where more analytical tests are done on all the beer we produce. We can accurately measure the color, carbonation level, bitterness, clarity and other parameters to make sure they are within our specifications."
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