Well aware of them and their usefulness at that task, my primary school adjoined one of the churches where he had been Rector and his name on the list of Rectors was a feature that was often pointed out . Brother usually has 3 or 4 of them with a young one introduced as an elder one winds down and dies. Sometimes I have to dog sit so he and wife can go away. Our normal lifestyle though would be unfair on a dog as I think it is unfair to leave them too long in a day unattended or put one into a kennel if we go away. A couple of near neighbours have dogs and I ?borrow? one occasionally as a companion for a walk or pub visit. I?ve known them since they were pups who used to get out and arrive in our garden, It?s rather nice that both dogs and owners trust us enough to do that and when hearing about people as featured in those neighbours from hell programmes realise how lucky we are .
Someone I know was an excise officer for a bit, and one of the regular jobs was to visit local breweries, to take original gravity readings at various points in the brew process so that the alcohol content could be measured, and hence the right duty paid.
They were always under strict instructions to never work alone for just that reason - get too close over the top of a large brewing kettle, and get a lung full of CO2, and the next thing you know was someone pulling you back from the edge (hopefully!)
My first real job of any length was in a Brewery where I got taken on as a temporary gopher to help with extra production leading up to Christmas and normally we would have been dismissed once all the empty casks and bottles had been returned in mid January . That year was different though as the Miners took on the government who responded with the 3 day week. In a good example of unintended consequences although many pubs closed people with not much to do on the the two days they could not work often hit the pubs when they were able and bought bottles to drink at home when they were not. We worked flat out to keep up with demand aided by the fact that beer was classed as food production and exempt from the restrictions and us temps were kept on till March. That gave me an opportunity to apply and get a position in the QC lab. One of our responsibilities was to test that the various FV and storage tanks had been purged of CO2 before staff were allowed to enter to clean them. We used a bellows pump and tubes from a company called Draeger and I see they are still available.
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Like the old breatherlsisers drawing an air sample through a glass tube filled with something that reacted by changing colour ,purple in this case and a scale on the tubes gave the concentration. It was highly stressed that despite being a mere whippersnapper a third of the age of many of the workers that doing this test properly and not letting them enter even if the result was borderline and they wanted to get on with job that the procedure had to followed to the letter as getting it wrong could cause death ,so you insisted they waited a bit longer and asked for a retest. Liquor as water was called in old breweries was sprayed in and run down the outlet to speed up the process.
One thing that the older breweries with open FV could suffer from was wildlife falling in , we are almost back on topic as some cats were allowed to live around to deal with the rats attracted by the grain store. Occasionally one would walk on the edge of a vessel get giddy and fall in. The unofficial rule was if you got the bugger out then nothing was said otherwise the contents were poured away. Occasionally a bird got in ,one unexpected one was a Moorhen from the river outside that got into a FV of Mild, suggestions we should sell it as a special as ?Moorhen Mild? had a nice ring to it were not taken up and down the plug hole it went so to speak.
So you Camra supporting cask beer loving drinkers of the 70?s when you supped a pint and said this tastes like cats piss you may well have been drinking some.
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