Recover Brands’ Beer Ambassador, Taylor White
Head Brewer, RJ Rockers Brewing Company
After sneaking a glimpse into the day to day of Recover Brands’ ambassador, RJ Rocker’s head brewer Taylor White, we’ll go ahead and put it right out there: making beer is hard work. It’s steamy, dusty and delicious. No matter how much you may have appreciated a hoppy microbrew before, you'll appreciate it more after reading this.
Recover has been working with RJ Rockers brewery in Spartanburg, SC on co-branded shirts for over five years. Hitting its 20th anniversary this April, RJ Rockers was founded by Mark Johnsen, who had the epiphany, “Why not start your own brewery and have free beer for life?” Recover incredibly values every one of our partnerships and it is with a kindred appreciation for community, sustainability, and really good beer, that our RJ Rockers partnership was born.
RJ Rockers’ Taylor White is one of those brewers who is extremely passionate about creating the beers that bring us together after a long day’s work, an exhilarating ride, or a weekend camping. At Recover, we cheers the hard work, sweat and joy of everyone’s every day. In the name of appreciating that and good beer, enjoy this look into A Day in the Life of a Brewer…
5:05 am: Alarm goes off.
5:10 am: Coffee on. Breakfast.
6:00 am: Get to work at RJ Rockers brewery. Heat up water. Rearrange, sort and shuttle grain, so that when it's go time everything’s in place and ready.
7:00 am: Rally the “mashing.” Taylor and Mark, founder of the brewery, heft heavy bags of barley and/ or wheat (depending on the recipe) up 8 steep stairs to dump them into a giant tank of 170 degree water. The starches of the grains begin to turn into sugars, which, through fermentation later in the brew process, create alcohol and carbonation, AKA: Beer.
8:15 am: Move the sugary pre-beer liquid, or “wort,” to the kettle. While the mashing started with 400 gallons of water, it ultimately produced 1000 gallons of wort. 600-650 more gallons of water are added to the mix, and the kettle reaches max volume for filling 30 barrels. Lots of numbers, we know- this isn’t easy to keep straight. It’s a lot of beer.
10:05 am: Commence “the boil.” Add in hops. Run all over. Weigh out hops for Batch 1 and start mashing for Batch 2.
11:40 am: Transfer wort to fermenter, add yeast. Once in the fermenter, the beer and the yeast do their dance for two weeks. After an additional week of “conditioning” in which the brew is clarified, the beer is ready to package.
2:00 pm: The beer’s still a brewing, but it’s time to clock out for Taylor. He has walked, climbed and jumped over 7 miles throughout the course of his 8 hour work shift and it’s time for the second brewer to take over.
2:15 pm: Go outside. Run. Spend time with beautiful wife and his instagram famous dog, Willy.
6:00 pm: Return to brewery for a beer with friends and dog. Then wake up and do it all again!
Don’t forget about a brewer’s days off:
When not crafting fine beer, Taylor White loves doing “anything in the outdoors.” He notes that, “As a fisherman and hunter, I don’t take environmental issues lightly. I want to conserve and preserve these areas to look like they did when I was a kid, and have the opportunity for kids to have these same experiences in the outdoors in the future.”
On working Every Day for a more sustainable tomorrow...
Recover Brands’ mission is to create the best, most environmentally friendly and socially responsible products possible; and to educate and inspire those around us to live and work for a sustainable tomorrow. Taylor takes part in this mission on and off the clock. In the brewing process, RJ Rockers works to reduce water use, save electricity by recycling heated water, and grow renewable energy infrastructure, such as the 10 solar panels on the brewery’s roof. An Environmental Studies major, Taylor notes, “This career and beer are directly dependent upon natural resources. It’s crazy how desensitized you can get to it all, but it’s all connected.”
And finally, of course we had to ask, “What’s this brewer’s favorite beer and piece of Recover Brands gear?”
RJ Rockers’ Palmetto Trail Pale Ale and my Recover 50/50 shirt from 4 years ago. It’s perfectly broken in. I wear it weekly.
Cheers to that!
