Coolships in the US

There's a certain beer blogger that uses a converted cake pan as a coolship to add some extra funk to his sour beers.

 

Here's a cool video of Bigfoot going through the same process

 

I have always liked that video.

Those fermenters are in a clean room, and also are used for Kellerweiss.

Edit - if you are at the taproom, the window in the far wall is at the end of the bar.

 

So a number of breweries have coolships within their brewery (I was previously aware of Anchor and Sierra Nevada). How many US breweries are actually using the coolship as a vessel to obtain airborne wild yeast?


Cheers!

 

The Sam Adams brewery in PA has coolships. Thank you JessKidden for the link.
https://sites.google.com/site/jesskidden/lehighvalleybrewery

 

I went to the link you posted but I ‘missed’ the discussion on coolship. Could you please provide some guidance where the coolship is mentioned?

Cheers!

 

Just to clarify, Anchor doesn't use their coolship to cool the wort.
http://www.anchorbrewing.com/blog/anchor-terminology-coolship/
However, since we now have the modern luxury of refrigeration and the wort is cooled before being pumped in, we no longer refer to our open fermenters as “coolships.”

 

At least one of those lambic breweries, (Cantillon) put their barrels through a sanitizing and cleaning process before filling/refilling to reduce or eliminate the transfer forward by the barrel from one batch to another and to let the primary source of yeast and bacteria be from the exposure while in the coolship.

 

Many will debate that. Brett goes deep in the wood. They clean with the square link chains to remove beers tone. Steam cleaning will take care of the acetobacter, but not get ride of all the bugs. It has been a while since I read the barrel discussion I. Wild brews, but there is a lot of information in there.

If you have been to Anderlecht, you might question how much good comes in on the night air these days.

 

I know Allagash is. I was just there and was given a tour of the coolship as well as everything else in the brewery.

Enjoy

 

I didn't say it was effective... just that they do the sanitizing soak and cleaning (as you say with chains and steam). Certainly as the information is presented in Anderlecht and written in the self guided tour booklet one is led to conclude they seem to believe it effective since they state their goal is to have only the coolship room and night breezes provide the bugs and critters.

 

Block 15 has a coolship.

 

They are traditional. Need to get the Enterobacteria in there somehow. ;-)

 

Yes, all the fruit and wild ales will be brewed there. Don't want those wild yeasts getting in the Spotted Cow.

 

Schaefer designed the brewery to use a coolship (for its original purpose of cooling wort), as noted in their brewing process diagram. Also mentioned under "#4 - BREW KETTLES").No idea if BBC still uses it, since the brewery has undergone numerous "upgrades" and addition under it other owners (Stroh-Pabst-Diageo) since it opened in the 70s.

A coolship was a pretty common piece of US brewery equipment even after Repeal - here's Coors bragging about building the largest one in the world in 1938 and Ballantine also used one (along with Baudelot coolers) around the same time.

 

Before reading this thread I didn't know what a coolship was, so now I've learned something today. And now I know that it isn't something from Star Trek.

 

Holy crap I always wondered what that building was. Used to see it on my drive to Lehigh University while I was a student there.

 

What is the "barrel discussion I. Wild brews" that you are talking about?

And also (I've never been to Anderlecht) what do you mean about "good" coming in? Just curious.

 

Poor typing here. There is a chapter that discusses using barrels in this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Brews-Culture-Craftsmanship-Tradition/dp/0937381861

Anderlecht is the part of Brussels where Cantillon is. That part is pretty run down.