Putting this media package together was a great learning experience and it will help me in the future. I had never done any blogging, videos, or slide shows before this class and learning how to do it was great.
I had to create an account on twitter.com, blogger.com, flickr.com and feedburner.com. I had never used any of these websites before this class but I am glad I got a chance to see the possibilities sites like these can offer.
If I had to do it all over again, I would try and get better quality video and pictures.
I really enjoyed this class very much and would like to thank Dr. Narro for all the possibilities and knowledge she has taught me about convergence journalism.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The Beer Making Process
The Abita Brewing Co. has been brewing beers since 1986. It has year- round flagship brews, seasonal brews, harvest brews and its special select series.
Four base ingredients are at the heart of every batch of beer Abita makes: water, barley, yeast and hops.
The town of Abita Springs has long been known for its fresh water, which comes from a deep artesian well. The water is so pure it has no need to be treated. The Abita Brewing Co. takes full advantage of this natural resource.
Barley is a cereal grain. It’s full of fiber. It must be malted before it can be used in the beer-making process. This involves watering the barley seed and then heating it in a large oven, or kiln, to halt the natural growing process. Malting is done to develop the enzymes in the barley. This allows barley starch to be turned into barley sugar.
“Many people believe the sheaves you see on the Abita labels are sheaves of wheat,” said Carl McDaniels. “But in fact they are sheaves of barley.”
Yeast is a single- celled microorganism that converts sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol, which is why it is an important ingredient in the beer making process.
“Yeast can be either top-fermenting or bottom-fermenting,” said Ryan Ackerman.
Top-fermenting yeast ferments from the top of the tank at warmer temperatures and makes a more aromatic beer with higher alcohol concentrations. Bottom-fermenting yeast ferments from the bottom of the tank at colder temperatures and creates more sugars for crisp tasting beers.
Hops are the female flowers of the hop plant. They are used for flavor and help to stabilize the beer. They give beer its bitter taste, which helps balance out the sweetness of the barley sugar.
These four ingredients are very important in the beer making process.
The first part in the process is called the “Mash.” This involves grounding the malted barley to reveal the starches. The end product is called grist.
“We mix the grist with warm water in the mash tun, which is just a huge stainless steel tank,” said Ackerman, “and we call that mixture the mash.”
The mash is then heated, which allows the starch to convert into sugar.
The next step in the process in called the Wort. In this step the mash is put into the Lauter Tun, a large tank with a false bottom that resembles a colander. The liquid from the mash, called the “first wort,” is drained and collected. Next is the Sparge, a process accomplished by spraying the remaining grains at the bottom of the tank with hot water to release the rest of the sugars and flavor from the Mash. This mixture is the “second wort.”
The next step is the boil. The first and second worts are combined and boiled. Hops are added early to balance the sweetness of the mash. In the middle of the boil, more hops are added for flavor and aroma. At the end of the boiling process even more hops are added to further enhance the aroma of the beer.
“After boiling the wort,” said Ackerman, “we put it into a machine that separates the solids from the liquids, until the wort is clear. It’s then cooled so we can add the yeast.”
The next step is fermentation. Yeast is added to the wort and the mixture is put into to a fermenting tank. The yeast eats the sugars, creating alcohol and carbon dioxide. The beer ferments from four to 14 days, with carbon dioxide being released from the tank throughout that time, leaving only the alcohol to remain. The tank is closed when 85 percent of the sugars have been eaten, allowing some carbon dioxide to remain for carbonation purposes.
“The type of beer we are making determines whether we use a top or bottom fermenting yeast,” said Ackerman.
The last step in the beer making process is allowing the beer to age. Depending on the brew, beer can be aged anywhere from 14 days to three months. It is then filtered one last time, bottled, and sent off for consumption.
NOLA.com
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Abita Select and Harvest Beers
[Abita Springs, October 29, 2009]- - Abita Select is an exclusive line of premium draft beers put out by the Abita Brewing Co. about every six weeks or so, depending on how fast the previous batch sells. The Select series is never the same; the beer is different with every batch the company brews. The Select series is always available, just never the same. Only an elite group of restaurants and beer bars receive the exclusive brew, and they are mostly local.“We brew the Select series to exemplify a style we don’t normally do,” said Nick Smith, a brewer at the Abita Brewery. “And it’s usually a specialty beer, so we can show off our prowess.”
Some restaurants use the Abita Select beers in “Select Dinners,” which are prepared specifically to go with the current Select brew, said Nick Smith.
The Abita Brewing Co. also uses some of its test batches as the Select series. While they were creating their flagship beer Jockamo, a traditional Indian Pale Ale, Abita Brewing Co. sold the test batches as the Select series, until they got it just right. Even these test batches are never the same; each has its own flavor.
“We brew these different selects to keep the customers interested,” said Nick Smith.
The Amber Ale is made from a blend of three different malts: pale, munich and caramel. It also is brewed with a lot of hops, the female flower clusters from the hop plant, to enhance the flavor and aroma. The amount of hops used is what mostly determines the flavor of the beer. Amber Ale does not have a specific recipe. The only thing it needs to be classified as Amber Ale is that it ranges in color from light golden to deep red. The rest is up to the creative mind of the Brew master.
The Oatmeal Stout is a more sweet flavored Stout. Stout beer is usually a dark beer with a sometimes bitter flavor. The use of oatmeal provides a sweeter, less bitter taste, and it also makes the beer feel silky-smooth in the mouth. The Belgian White, also called “witbier” in Dutch, is made from barley and wheat. This beer will look hazy and almost white when cold, hence its name.
The Imperial Stout is a strong, thick, dark beer with slightly higher alcohol content. It is considered a winter beer because of its thickness as opposed to a summer beer, which is thinner and lighter. It will be coming soon to select vendors.
“This is about the third or fourth Stout we’ve made since I’ve been here,” said Ryan Ackerman. “There is always such a high demand for this style of beer. Every year the demand seems to grow.”
The Abita Brewing Co. also brews Harvest beers. These beers make use of local, seasonal Louisiana ingredients. The Harvest beers include Strawberry Harvest Lager, Pecan Harvest Ale, and Satsuma Harvest Wit.
The Strawberry Harvest Lager is a wheat beer. It’s dry and light with a hint of strawberries that are home-grown right here in Louisiana. Its sweeter taste makes it a perfect pairing for desserts.
The Pecan Harvest Ale is made with toasted Louisiana pecans. It is copper in color, light in body and smooth tasting. The pecans make this beer unique because most nut flavored beers are not made with real nuts at all. The oils from the pecans give it its nutty flavor and aroma.
The Satsuma Harvest Wit is made from wheat, oats, barley and homegrown Louisiana Satsumas, a type of citrus fruit. It has a hint of spice and citrus flavor. It is pale in color, like the color of straw with and orange tint, and has a slightly hazy look.
The Harvest beers will make an appearance every year. And while the Select beer is available year round, once a specific batch is gone, it is unknown if it shall ever return. Only a few Select beers have been repeated.
The Select beers can only been found in certain places, including The Abita Brew Pub, the Hotel Monteleone, The Bull Dog, Lager’s International, and Red Fish Grill. For a complete list of vendors, visit The Abita Brewing Co. website at www.abita.com.
NOLA.com
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
An Abita Man
[October 13, 2009, Abita Springs, LA]--Ryan Ackerman wakes up to a dark, cold room, just the way he likes it. The sun is shining outside, but his window blinds are shut tight. It’s three in the afternoon and his day has just begun. Ackerman works the night shift at the Abita Brewery.
Ackerman reluctantly pulls back his white comforter and forces himself to get up. He wearily walks to the bathroom and turns on the shower, making it as hot as his skin can stand it. The smell of Zest soap fills his nostrils.
The night shift starts at 5 p.m., and he makes sure that he’s ready in enough time to grab himself something to eat on his way to work. He usually stops at Chick-fil-A and orders himself an eight piece chicken nugget with waffle fries and a large Dr. Pepper.
“It’s the breakfast of champions,” Ackerman says with a laugh. “And I’m not big on cooking.”
Ackerman lives alone in his beige, three-bedroom, two bath house most of the time. His seven-year-old son Michael stays with him on the weekends. “That’s about the only time I cook,” he says.
Ackerman pulls through the gates of the Abita Brewery and parks his white Dodge Charger in the same spot he always does.
“We don’t really have assigned parking spots, but that one is understood to be mine and so no one ever parks there.” Ackerman says as he enters the plant through the engineering department.
Red racks filled with various types of tools and replacement motors line the walls and are dispersed throughout the room. There is a work bench and welding table in the center. Carl Mcdaniels, the brewery’s electrician, is sitting at the work bench testing a back-up motor.
“I’ve worked with Ryan for a while now, almost two years,” Carl says over the roar of the motor. “He does a real good job, and we’re proud to have him here.”
Ackerman weaves his way through the racks and heads next door to the break-room to eat his food and clock-in.
“The break room is the best spot in the whole plant,” Ackerman says. “It’s one of the few rooms that have air-conditioning, and it has three beer taps, but we can’t indulge in that until we’re off the clock.”
Ackerman does a walk-through of the plant to make sure there are no problems in any of the other departments and to make sure everything is running properly. He then relieves the bottle filler machine operator and finishes the production run until the beer tank is empty or quotas have been met.
“We usually fill about four thousand cases per day; that’s about 96,000 bottles,” Ackerman says as he watches the bottles go down the conveyer belt.
When the bottle-filling is done, Ackerman sanitizes the equipment with a caustic and warm water solution. Safety goggles and gloves must be worn during this process.
“You do not want to get this stuff on your skin,” Ackerman says as sweat rolls down his cheek. “It burns really bad. I’ve gotten it on me quite a few times, and it’s nothing nice”
Ackerman finishes up the sanitation process and walks to the office he shares with the plant engineer. The office is cool, with white walls and a desk that is covered with various papers, a computer and a corded black telephone. There is a bookcase on one wall filled with instruction manuals and drawings of all the various machinery in the plant.
“This is where I come to place orders for parts that the plant needs,” Ackerman says as he looks through a manual for a part number. “We have most of the parts here on site because we have to maintain a certain number of them in inventory for when things break down or for scheduled maintenance purposes.”
Ackerman walks into the inventory room, which is connected to the office. The room has grey shelving lining three of the walls. The shelves are stacked six-feet high with grey boxes, labeled one through 89. Ackerman walks to the box numbered 62 and retrieves a fill valve spring to replace the one that is broken on the bottle filler machine.
“These springs have to be replaced about every three months,” Ackerman says as he walks towards the bottle filler machine.
As Ackerman replaces the spring on the fill valve, his brown hair is blown ever so slightly by the massive fan overhead, yet perspiration continues to drip down his face.
“It stays pretty hot in here because the heat from the pasteurizer fills the room,” Ackerman says.
The pasteurizer is where the bottles go after being filled and capped to ensure that all bacteria has been eliminated.
“The pasteurizer, in a 24-minute process, gradually warms the bottles to 153 degrees Fahrenheit and then cools them down,” Ackerman says as he wipes his face with a towel he keeps looped through his belt.
After the part replacement is done, Ackerman walks to the beer cellar to sample the different batches of beer that are fermenting to see if they are evolving correctly over time. He walks from one stainless steel tank to another with a handful of disposable plastic Abita beer cups.
“I use a different cup to taste each of the beers to avoid cross-contamination of the flavors,” Ackerman says as he sips a taste of Andygator, the most potent beer the brewery makes.
“This is a perk of the job,” Ackerman says as he laughs. “How many people can say they get to drink beer on the job?”
Ackerman spends most of his time on the night shift inspecting and sanitizing the machines. He also repairs anything that is broken and does scheduled maintenance on the equipment.
“I love being on the night shift,” Ackerman says. “It’s not as busy as the day shift and there is no one here to bother me. I just do my own thing and make sure everything is ready for the next day’s production. I couldn’t ask for a better job. Nice people, good pay and free beer.”
| Abita Man |
Ackerman reluctantly pulls back his white comforter and forces himself to get up. He wearily walks to the bathroom and turns on the shower, making it as hot as his skin can stand it. The smell of Zest soap fills his nostrils.
The night shift starts at 5 p.m., and he makes sure that he’s ready in enough time to grab himself something to eat on his way to work. He usually stops at Chick-fil-A and orders himself an eight piece chicken nugget with waffle fries and a large Dr. Pepper.
“It’s the breakfast of champions,” Ackerman says with a laugh. “And I’m not big on cooking.”
Ackerman lives alone in his beige, three-bedroom, two bath house most of the time. His seven-year-old son Michael stays with him on the weekends. “That’s about the only time I cook,” he says.
Ackerman pulls through the gates of the Abita Brewery and parks his white Dodge Charger in the same spot he always does.
“We don’t really have assigned parking spots, but that one is understood to be mine and so no one ever parks there.” Ackerman says as he enters the plant through the engineering department.
Red racks filled with various types of tools and replacement motors line the walls and are dispersed throughout the room. There is a work bench and welding table in the center. Carl Mcdaniels, the brewery’s electrician, is sitting at the work bench testing a back-up motor.
“I’ve worked with Ryan for a while now, almost two years,” Carl says over the roar of the motor. “He does a real good job, and we’re proud to have him here.”
Ackerman weaves his way through the racks and heads next door to the break-room to eat his food and clock-in.
“The break room is the best spot in the whole plant,” Ackerman says. “It’s one of the few rooms that have air-conditioning, and it has three beer taps, but we can’t indulge in that until we’re off the clock.”
Ackerman does a walk-through of the plant to make sure there are no problems in any of the other departments and to make sure everything is running properly. He then relieves the bottle filler machine operator and finishes the production run until the beer tank is empty or quotas have been met.
“We usually fill about four thousand cases per day; that’s about 96,000 bottles,” Ackerman says as he watches the bottles go down the conveyer belt.
When the bottle-filling is done, Ackerman sanitizes the equipment with a caustic and warm water solution. Safety goggles and gloves must be worn during this process.
“You do not want to get this stuff on your skin,” Ackerman says as sweat rolls down his cheek. “It burns really bad. I’ve gotten it on me quite a few times, and it’s nothing nice”
Ackerman finishes up the sanitation process and walks to the office he shares with the plant engineer. The office is cool, with white walls and a desk that is covered with various papers, a computer and a corded black telephone. There is a bookcase on one wall filled with instruction manuals and drawings of all the various machinery in the plant.
“This is where I come to place orders for parts that the plant needs,” Ackerman says as he looks through a manual for a part number. “We have most of the parts here on site because we have to maintain a certain number of them in inventory for when things break down or for scheduled maintenance purposes.”
Ackerman walks into the inventory room, which is connected to the office. The room has grey shelving lining three of the walls. The shelves are stacked six-feet high with grey boxes, labeled one through 89. Ackerman walks to the box numbered 62 and retrieves a fill valve spring to replace the one that is broken on the bottle filler machine.
“These springs have to be replaced about every three months,” Ackerman says as he walks towards the bottle filler machine.
As Ackerman replaces the spring on the fill valve, his brown hair is blown ever so slightly by the massive fan overhead, yet perspiration continues to drip down his face.
“It stays pretty hot in here because the heat from the pasteurizer fills the room,” Ackerman says.
The pasteurizer is where the bottles go after being filled and capped to ensure that all bacteria has been eliminated.
“The pasteurizer, in a 24-minute process, gradually warms the bottles to 153 degrees Fahrenheit and then cools them down,” Ackerman says as he wipes his face with a towel he keeps looped through his belt.
After the part replacement is done, Ackerman walks to the beer cellar to sample the different batches of beer that are fermenting to see if they are evolving correctly over time. He walks from one stainless steel tank to another with a handful of disposable plastic Abita beer cups.
“I use a different cup to taste each of the beers to avoid cross-contamination of the flavors,” Ackerman says as he sips a taste of Andygator, the most potent beer the brewery makes.
“This is a perk of the job,” Ackerman says as he laughs. “How many people can say they get to drink beer on the job?”
Ackerman spends most of his time on the night shift inspecting and sanitizing the machines. He also repairs anything that is broken and does scheduled maintenance on the equipment.
“I love being on the night shift,” Ackerman says. “It’s not as busy as the day shift and there is no one here to bother me. I just do my own thing and make sure everything is ready for the next day’s production. I couldn’t ask for a better job. Nice people, good pay and free beer.”
NOLA.com
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