Woman: Pittsburgh loves knowing what’s going on.

Senator Jay Costa: Yeah.

Woman: They love knowing each other and our drinkers love knowing who makes their beer. So, we’re really putting ourselves out there as far as who we are and what we’re doing.

So, this is where we crush these grains and soak them in hot water and that creates our mash.

Senator Jay Costa: Okay.

Woman: And that, also, is what creates that sugary substance that creates the beer.

Senator Jay Costa: Okay.

Woman: But depending on when we add those hops in the boil will provide different effect. The longer that those hops are boiled, the more we’ll just get more of a bite character from them. The later we’ll get flavor and aroma.

Senator Jay Costa: Okay.

Woman: So . . .

Senator Jay Costa: I’m a bite guy. I like–

Woman: Yeah.

Senator Jay Costa: . . . to have a good beer bite. Yup.

Woman: Yeah. You’ll have to try our FDA sometime.

Senator Jay Costa: Okay. And then, at some point, you take it out of here and then what do you do with it from there?

Woman: Yup. So, once we are done boiling, we move it over to one of our fermenters. These are conical fermenters, the cone shape. Twenty-four barrel brew house, as well, so we can make up to 24 barrels between two batches.

Move it over here, we add yeast and that yeast takes the sugars that we created over here and turns those into ethanol and CO2. So, a beer, at a minimum, is going to be in the fermenter for about two weeks. Max maybe a month and a half. It really depends on the style of beer.

So, this is an Irish coffee stout, so it has a milk stout base and we have French oak chips that were soaked on Irish whiskey. So, it’s going to be really unique.

Senator Jay Costa: So, this is a blend of Irish whiskey flavor combined with beer? Am I getting that right?

Woman: Yeah, yeah. So, I kind of was just mimicking an Irish coffee, itself, is what I was really going after, so . . .

Senator Jay Costa: This is good. Yeah.

Woman: Yeah. That one’s coming out really nice. Oh, yeah.

Senator Jay Costa: Tell me about how it is that you create different types of what I’ll call blends. I mean that’s got to be–

Woman: Yeah.

Senator Jay Costa: The creativity part has to kind of be neat. Knowing, you know, how to combine Irish whiskey with the certain brew or whatever, that sounds like that would be an interesting part of what you do.

Woman: Yeah. Truthfully, I think that’s a big reason why a lot of breweries get into it is because there’s so much science behind it, but there’s a lot of art and creativity. So, when I went to think about, you know, what, you know, what is going to be unique, it’s very typical to see a dry Irish stout and I’m like, “Well, I want to make a twist on this.” You know, I have a very rich Irish background and I’m pretty sure I made a beer that my grandma would be proud of.

Senator Jay Costa: So, what do you do, like, when you have a creative moment where you want to figure out like this green tea we just talked about? What do you do it in the smaller setting before you jump into doing it in the large vats? Where do you test it at?

Woman: Sure. If you want to, I can show you one of the kegs that we use to do that kind of stuff. We primarily use this to move these from one tank to another, but I have a couple others that allow us to, like, soak the beer on, like, a certain type of fruit, do the [unintelligible at 00:03:15], so stuff like that. This is like a really great keg to have. You know, it has the valve–

Senator Jay Costa: That’s your sample tap so to speak.

Woman: Yeah.

Senator Jay Costa: That’s where you try to make your different craft.

Woman: So, this is our cold room. All of these tanks in here are single walled, so that’s why they’re in this particular room. We maintain our temperature. We’re at 38 degrees, which is the proper serving temperature for it. Comparatively to our fermenters, they actually have glycol running so we can individually control the temperature for those fermenters. This is where we serve our beer from, so you can see the hoses on the bottom.

Senator Jay Costa: Okay. So, this makes its way right to the bar?

Woman: Yup, absolutely.

Senator Jay Costa: Well, I was very impressed with the Rock Bottom Microbrewery operation we have here in Homestead in the waterfront. The establishment and the creation of these microbreweries allow people to be able to bring creativity, able to bring science, be able to bring the business background into an entity that, you know, creates jobs and also it creates some entertainment for folks, as well.