SeanTerrill.com » work

Practically a Mini-Mash

webmaster — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:46:50 +0000

At 335 pounds, Tuesday’s grain bill (for our next seasonal, a Smoked Vienna Lager) was the smallest I’ve done yet. It’s remarkable how much more smoothly the brew day goes when you only have two-thirds the usual amount of grist to deal with…

Until the backflow valve on a sump pump broke and I spent half an hour up to my shoulders in sewage, trying to figure out what was wrong, that is.

They still weigh 180 lb apiece though.

WTF Is Going On?

webmaster — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 07:02:24 +0000

So, yeah, it’s been a while. Long story short, I am now the Head Brewer at Silverton Brewing Co. Long story slightly less short, I’m also the only brewhouse employee for the time being. A 70-hour week means I managed a day off. I’m planning a minor shift in focus in that direction, blog-wise. There are a lot of tips and tricks that professional brewers will find helpful, and home brewers may not.

I know that most of you come here to drink from the cup of home brewing glory, and rest assured I have been able to sneak the occasional batch in this spring/summer. I’m going to get all those recipes and tasting notes up in the next few days. There’s also some really fun stuff in the pipeline for the fall as well, including my first recipes using Brettanomyces. Stay tuned.

Sup?

webmaster — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 05:13:03 +0000

In case anyone was wondering what I’ve been doing in stead of blogging, here’s (part of) the answer. I finally got around to revamping the Silverton Brewing Co. website. It’s now 100% Flash-free, and 100% grammatically correct (probably). Also, I don’t know if you’ve ever poked around in some HTML source that was generated by at least three people using at least two WYSIWYG editors, but I definitely earned my Wheaties today.

http://www.silvertonbrewing.com

…And We’re Back

webmaster — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 00:44:21 +0000

Hello (again). My apologies to regular readers (Google Analytics assures me there are some) for the long absence, but getting internet access was an unexpected ordeal.

Silverton is interesting, and brewing is interesting, and I’m sure I’ll be writing plenty about both in the long, cold months to come. For now, though, shiny things!

When the Going Gets Weird…

webmaster — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:11:30 +0000

…the weird turn pro. Say hello to Silverton, CO. Population 531, elevation 9318 ft, and soon-to-be home of Assistant Brewer Sean Terrill.

Now imagine it with eight feet of snow.

Same Shift, Different Day

webmaster — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:06:01 +0000

Well, I’m unemployed again. Today’s tips, in order, were:

$1.11
$0.09
$0.11
$0.21
$0.00
$2.10
$0.01
$0.00
$0.00
$2.32
$3.21

Not only did I not make minimum wage, I had a flat – technically, I lost money by going to work today.

The moral of the story is: tip your driver well. You never know how many other people you have to compensate for, to keep him from quitting.

Ten Deliveries

webmaster — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 04:24:12 +0000

What’s the point of having GPS on your iPhone if you aren’t going to geek out about stuff?

Name:    13 June 2010
Date:    Jun 13, 2010 6:17 pm
Map:    Google Maps
Distance:    48.3 miles
Elapsed Time:    1:50:30
Avg Speed:    26.2 mph
Max Speed:    55.1 mph
Avg Pace:    02′ 17″ per mile
Min Altitude:    656 ft
Max Altitude:    819 ft
Start Time:    2010-06-13T22:17:01Z

View Larger Map

How I Spend My Time at Work

webmaster — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:36:01 +0000

I really don’t know what all the fuss is about graphic design. This was super easy and hardly looks like crap at all. (It’s also an awesome example of your tax dollars at work.)

This gag would work a lot better if it was an actual pizza.

Today on ChaCha

webmaster — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:12:40 +0000

If a rock is dropped from a sea cliff, and the sound of it striking the ocean is heard 3.2 seconds later and the speed of sound is 340 m/s, how high is the cliff?

No need to show your work, but time yourself. It seems like a question that would totally be worth answering for 16¢, but in actuality it took me almost eight minutes. (In my defense, finding an online polynomial solver ate up a lot of that time.)

Things I Hate #12: Round-Up “Tipping”

webmaster — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:10:13 +0000

In almost two years of working as a pizza “delivery expert”, I’ve probably seen every conceivable tip amount within reason; in fact Sunday I got a personal-best tip of $25. Granted, that was a $238 order, but you’d be surprised how many people think $2-3 is a good tip, no matter how large the order. As a quick summary, there are three reasons to tip your delivery driver, and well:

Just like a waiter, he doesn’t make minimum wage unless you tip.
Unlike a waiter, he has the substantial operating expenses of gas and wear and tear on a car (currently $0.585/mile).
If you don’t tip, he might spit in your food.

The minimum adequate tip would therefore be one that would enable the driver to make minimum wage during the round trip to and from your house after covering his expenses. Even for a 15 minute, 5 mile round-trip delivery, that’s about $3.50. Very few people actually tip enough.

That said, I’ve pretty much come to accept that a certain fraction of the public simply doesn’t tip. Where I work, it seems to be about 10%. That number increases dramatically, however, if you define a non-tip to include rounding up to the nearest dollar. With cash orders, this makes sense: I don’t carry change, so unless you have exact change ready for me (about 5% of deliveries) you have no choice but to “tip” me the remainder. Just to be clear, telling the driver “keep the change” is not a tip, it’s an insult.

Doing the same thing on a credit card receipt, though, is doubly insulting. It tells the driver in no uncertain terms that you want NOT to tip, but feel obligated, although your guilt can be assuaged by an amount that likely won’t pay for the gas required to bring you your food. The driver will therefore return from the delivery with LESS MONEY than he had before. Some people will try a variation on this theme by signing the credit card receipt without filling in the “Tip” and “Total” lines, hoping I won’t notice. I actually prefer customers who boldly write “0.00″, standing up for whatever warped philosophy they think they’re defending. If you’re going to cheat me out of my livelihood, the least you can do is be honest with yourself.