Quick background, I was recently hired on by a brewery with the intention of taking the head brewer position at a new location they're opening in the fall. After a few weeks of working at their original location, they informed me that they were unsatisfied with their current head brewer for that location and would be letting him go, with me taking his place. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but I rolled with it. Felt a little sorry for the old brewer, because he was a decent enough guy and we got along ok, and I hadn't intended to take his job, but it wasn't up to me, so what could I do? I officially took over last Monday. I should also mention that this is pretty much a one man operation. He was the assistant brewer, got promoted to head brewer something like a year ago when the last head brewer left, and was pretty much running the place by himself. He wouldn't do things the owner asked for, like cleaning so the brewery looked nice for tours, didn't come up with many of his recipes, wasn't really repping the brand like they wanted him too. That's the reason I was told they let him go. I actually took an hour or so after I finished most of my work Friday to clean the windows to the brewery, because they were filthy. Some of the investors were there and they were ecstatic that I was just doing that.

Now to the nightmare. I take over, I'm figuring out all the peculiarities of this brewery. Brewed a pilot batch last week, had a delay on a grain order so I had to wait until today to brew for the first time. I have two empty fermenters, one I cleaned, and one that I assumed the other guy had cleaned. The second tank is already put together, so I figure I'll just go into that one. I mash in for the day, go to sanitize the tank, and the manway door is sticking a bit. I think "Huh, maybe he emptied it but didn't have time to clean it before he left." And open it, and the smell hits me. This musty, dirty, moldy, disgusting smell. The inside is caked with mold. I go searching through the brew logs and figure out that this tank hasn't had a beer in it since last August. He had literally just been letting this tank sit dirty for 9 fucking months! Didn't even really rinse it. I sent pictures of the growth to the owner, and he was understandably just as pissed as I was. Thankfully, I had the tank that I had cleaned available, so I was able to finish the brew day without trouble. Tomorrow I'm probably going to have dedicate most of my day to getting that tank clean though. All the gaskets are getting tossed, I'm ready to do several CIP cycles with all the caustic and more. I just can't comprehend how someone can call themselves a head brewer and then allow this to happen in their brewery. Wish me luck.

Imgur isn't working for me right now, and I'm dead tired, but I'll try to upload some pictures tomorrow.