Nitin's on a writing spree - this week about our guardian angel Avez Bhai.
In all the four years of engineering I studied, there was one subject that made me want to tear my hair out in frustration, it was Thermodynamics (and its various offspring - Thermodynamics 2 and Refrigeration/ Air Conditioning). I hated it so much, that in the semesters when we had these subjects, the atheist in me would walk up 1000+ steps of the Chamundi Hills, just to ‘hedge my bets’ to pass the subject.
So, you have to understand my disgust when we had to design a cooling system for the meadery, since buying a new one was ridiculously expensive and hence out of the question. Thankfully, Nakul of GreatStateAleWorks introduced us to Avez Bhai.
To understand Avez Bhai, you have to understand the brewing scene in Mumbai-Pune during the 2010-2017 period. Love for brewing juxtaposed with the absolute lack of capital was pretty much the starting point for most of us. And the perfect phrase to describe this lot of ‘dreamers’ is perhaps, ‘romantic fools’. But the funny thing about romantic fools is that most of them invariably end up having to think outside the box—which is where Avez Bhai lives, right on the edge.
Almost every brewery (and meadery in our case) that started in this period got its start with a stopgap cooling system, courtesy of Avez Bhai. His final prescription for us was a 3-ton AC compressor connected to copper coils submerged into 500 litres of glycol/water mix in a 'sintex' tank. For those who don’t know what glycol is; it is an organic compound which has a really low freezing point and hence works well as an anti-freeze formulation.
The next step was building out the piping for this glycol. Not having enough money meant, buying UPVC pipes to connect our sintex tank to the 2 wine tanks, which were both then hand insulated.
The final design was executed in less than 1/8th of the cost of an industrial-sized cooling solution in incorporating every principle of jugaard one could find.
Avez bhai, if you ever happen to read this, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts!
PS: I cleared all my Thermodynamics papers in the first attempt (even though I despised the subject), but I continue to remain an atheist.
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