She is a massive girl and, frankly there is no other way to say this; she has lived a hard life. She is about seven feet tall from her battered head to her stumpy rusted feet. She has a hard time finding evening gowns that fit, due in large part to being the better part of eight feet wide.  She tips the scales at a somewhat less than dainty 1500 lbs. She has a ravenous appetite. It is nothing but a thing for her to gulp down 1,000 gallons of any liquid you throw her way. She has what amounts to the textbook definition of a seedy underbelly and she redefines "rough around the edges," but despite this, we love her dearly. She is Bertha and she is our brand spanking ancient cold liquor tank.

A cold liquor tank is a big hunk of stainless steel that often has a jacket of metal by which means you can cool any liquid (usually water) inside. That cold liquid can then be used to cool your wort (the sugars you get from mashing malt) so that it is ready to ferment. For many years, brewing was a seasonal activity because brewing generally demands cooler temperatures to ferment beer. But with a cold liquor tank and a heat exchanger you can brew even in hot and sticky August. Even in Florida. Furthermore, you can even brew amazing beers, as we here at Tampa’s Cigar City Brewing intend to prove. This means you don’t have to brew bland blonde ales or muddy pale lagers. Though the unrelenting presence of these brews has more to do with uninspired brewery owners and jack all to do with cold liquor tanks. So, I’ll get back on track.

Bertha. She came, as so many Floridian transplants have, from up north. And like so many transplants before her she arrived with bad skin and a sickly white pallor that would make Boo Radley’s ass look tropical. Bertha put in roughly 20 years working in the dairy industry. Her primary goal was to suck up around 32 barrels of creamy white milk and then swirl it around via the agitator we call her head. Somewhere along the way she either picked up a nasty drug habit or an abusive beau. We don’t know for sure and Bertha won’t say, but what we do know is her ass is rusted out and she is in dire need of a tan, or a paint job. But, despite her hardships Bertha has a heart of pure stainless steel and she stands (somewhat wobbly due to a rusted back left leg) ready to be there for any man (or brewery) who will stick with her through the good times and the bad.

Please welcome Bertha the first piece of brewing equipment to arrive at the Cigar City Brewing warehouse. We love Bertha and we cannot wait to nurse her back to health so that she may be redeemed in the bright Florida sunshine. Nevertheless, we are glad that most of the rest of our equipment will be new because we do not have time to run a wayward house for downtrodden stainless tanks.

Speaking of nursing back to health…..we’ll be holding a painting party pretty soon to paint our kegs and to spruce Bertha up. Any volunteers who are willing to come out and help us slap logos on our kegs and paint on ol’ Bertha will receive, first and foremost, an extremely filthy set of clothes (you must provide the clothes) but secondarily a bottle of one of our test batch brews AND the right to sign Bertha’s ass! If you are interested in the Cigar City Brewing Painting Party please contact Wayne at wayne@cigarcitybrewing.com or Joey at joe@cigarcitybrewing.com