SAN ANTONIO – If you sat down and made a list of really cool jobs, somewhere near the top would have to be working for a beer company.
News 4 toured the larger-than-life beer garden at the Silver Eagle Budweiser distribution warehouse on the west side.
It’s a playground of pints and a maze of malts that makes you want to raise a glass.
"I love my job,” Silver Eagle general sales manager Tom Sarette says. “I have the best job in America. I'm a beer man. I'm a Bud man."
How many bottles of beer on the wall? Sarette counts 900 thousand cases.
That should last awhile, right?
“We’ve got about two-and-a-half, three weeks of inventory here,” he says.
That’s it? Wow – we must really love beer.
"It's very much, in my opinion, much like sports,” Sarette describes the beer industry.
The finish line is who can deliver the goods the fastest.
"Beer is a perishable product,” Sarette says. “It has a life of its own. It's a living organism. So when it gets hot, secondary fermentation starts to occur. That's why most beer has to be dated."
And in the Texas heat, the warehouse must be climate-controlled.
"Temperature in here is about 60 degrees,” Sarette says.
If you think that’s cold, the keg room is kept at 32 degrees. Draft beer is not pasteurized so it has to be that cold before it gets delivered to the store.
"We separate it by our domestic, by our imports and crafts,” Sarette describes the organization of the warehouse.
It’s a world tour of beer from about 20 different countries.
“It takes a lot of knowledge,” forklift driver George Garza says.
Every case has its place so the forklift drivers know exactly where to go.
"Making sure the pallet is sitting right on the forks,” Garza says. “Making sure you're always looking in the rear."
He carefully zigs and zags the pallets intro delivery trucks.
"People always tell me -- where's the beer?" Garza says while laughing.
But before you ask: there’s no drinking and driving on the property.
Silver Eagle is holding a job fair July 21 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
