Build an SOP for your brewery
We strive to make the best beer possible, and to do that we not only have to work off of great recipes and ingredients, but just as importantly, we need to be consistent. Many breweries employ more than one person, and those employees tend to move around within the organization, or move to a different brewery altogether. It seems like you could spend quite a lot of time training a new assistant or cellar person - and how long will they stay? - and the best way to keep everything consistent in training and beyond is to have your own Standard Operation Procedure.
I wrote ours up into book format called the Colorado Boy SOP that we include in our Immersion Course. This gives our students a jumping off place to create their own, using ours as a starting point. We have even changed some of the things we do that were originally in our process, but I digress. My point is to build your own, you will sleep better knowing you have one!
To start, just grab a yellow legal pad and keep it with you for a week or so to write down the steps for whatever task you are performing each day. This is a hassle, but well worth it.
On brew day simply write down every step you take from kettle on - or before - to clean up. I doubt this will add ten minutes to your day. You may discover that you have to re-write it at the end of your shift while enjoying your pint, because no doubt your pad will have gotten wet, and you will have a difficult time trying to read what you wrote. So better to re-write at the end of your shift while you can still remember.
On your next brew day, use that cleaned-up version to follow along as you brew. If there are any discrepancies or inaccuracies, you can cross them out and write the correct procedure in its place. This may take a few brews, but eventually you will get through a brew day without making any modifications, and then you are set, at least for that procedure.
Now do the same thing for all of your other procedures. The ones in our SOP include:
Keg Cleaning
Keg Filling
Tank Cleaning
Carbonation Stone Cleaning and Sanitization
Tank Pacification
Tank Sanitizing
Carbonating
Yeast Harvest
Yeast Cell Counts and Viability
Yeast Pitching: Closed Method
Yeast Pitching: Open Method
Brew Prep
Brew Day
End of Brew Cleaning
Packing The Heat Exchanger
Beer Line Cleaning
Cleaning Beer Engine
Cask Ale Procedure
Dry Hoping
This may sound like a lot of work, but really, it isn’t. You are doing these things anyway, so you just have to write your procedures down and check them to make sure they are correct.
Buy a three-ring binder and those little tab dividers you get at your office supply place. On the dividers write each SOP section. Then in between each divider, add the piece of paper that lists your SOP. When your SOP for that particular item changes, just rip out the old one and replace it with your new procedure.
With this in the brewery, there is no excuse for all things in the brewery to be done the same way no matter who is doing the job. Of course in the “real world” many will have done the procedures so many times they will not consult this book, but when someone is new, this is a much-needed road map and will make everyones life much easier.
By the way, even if you are a brewery in planning, you can start to build this book now with your current methods, and just replace them when you have your larger equipment. This will give you a head start, and you may find there is not a lot of difference in what you are currently doing and what you will be doing once you are open. But then again, it may be totally different. At least you will get used to following this system and it will help with your sanity.