A new 10-barrel (310 gallon) brite tank was purchased and picked up from Practical Fusion in Portland on Thursday (13 December 2018). We loaded it into the bed of my pickup and I drove it back to Baker City. Fortunately, there was little to no snow on the roads, so the drive was uneventful (although I-84 ended up closing the next day due to high winds and poor visibility: crisis avoided!). Hauling a large, top-heavy tank was a bit nerve-wracking, so I was happy to not have any added obstacles.

This is probably the biggest equipment purchase for starting up the cidery. A brite tank is basically a large pressurized vessel for adding CO₂ to the finished cider prior to packaging (e.g., bottling or kegging). A couple of instructional documents on how they are operated are here and here. I previously had a smaller brite tank (1 bbl) that was used in my basement for R&D, so this one is a nice step up.

R&D 1-barrel brite tank

Securing the brite tank to a pallet

Loading the tank

At Multnomah Falls

I picked up a Pall 16″ × 4 lenticular filter housing in October 2018 for cider filtration. This is a nice addition for rough filtration—as opposed to aging and settling—prior to packaging the cider. Dry ciders likely won’t get additional treatment beyond this—as in sterile filtration or pasteurization—but off-dry or sweeter ciders will be pasteurized for shelf stability.