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~PLAN~

Don't Forget Your Inner Homebrewer

I imagine that most of us got started in this business as homebrewers. I did, just barely. I got it in my head to add a brewery onto my wood oven pizzeria back in 1992, so naturally I had to start somewhere and homebrewing was the way to go.

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Approaching the construction of a “real” brewing system, I looked at it as a homebrewer would, that is, I tried to figure out how to build the system without spending a fortune. Naturally I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned because I had the passion that a homebrewer has about beer.

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I continued building more breweries over the years – seven that I have owned – and have helped over one hundred more open through our brewery immersion course (mentorship) we teach. My north star has always been to approach each and every project like a homebrewer.

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That is by asking myself how can I make a great beer without taking out a huge loan for state-of- the-art equipment?

 

For example (and you are going to like or hate this) most breweries are seven-barrel systems or less. You can purchase a glycol chiller from a brewing supply place for $10,000 plus, or, what a home brewer would do, purchase a glycol line chiller for $1,800 that can easily handle three fermenters. You’re welcome.

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This mindset will help you retain capital that you need to grow. Most of my friends whose breweries make over 60k BBL’s per year all started this way. It is one of the reasons they were able to grow. Check out Sierra Nevada’s first brew kettle to see what I mean.

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If you are planning a brewery, stop for a minute and think if you really need all those fancy controls on that sweet brewer’s platform. Well of course if you have a 30 BBL system you might, but I’ll bet most are planning a seven to ten-barrel instead. Think I’m wrong about this?

 

Change my mind. I’ll wait.

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Contributing Author

Tom Hennessy                                  Founder, Colorado Boy Brewing

               

Tom Hennessy has opened seven breweries of his own and helped open over 100 more with hisColorado Boy Brewery Immersion Course. His video Frankenbrew, from 1995 has become a cultclassic in the brewing world. His three brewing books include The Brewery Operations Manual,Colorado Boy SOP, and The Affordable Brewery. Tom lives, brews and writes in his mountaintown of Ridgway, Colorado. 

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Overview

Many chemicals are used in the brewing process that have hazards, including chemical burns from corrosives, fire hazards from flammables, and pressure hazards from compressed gases.

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Chemicals must be used, stored, and disposed of properly to prevent accidents or environmental releases.

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General Chemical Safety Requirements

• Always wear proper PPE.

• Inspect PPE to ensure there are no holes, rips, or tears.

• Do not eat or smoke in production areas.

• Know where emergency eyewash and shower stations are located and ensure there is a clear pathway to the nearest station.

• Understand the chemical(s) you’re working with by reading the applicable Safety Data sheet(s).

• NEVER mix strong acids and bases.

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Hazard Communication

OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) is designed to 

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Matt Vincent, Ska Fabricating

You’ve got your space, you’ve picked your brewing equipment, and maybe you’re already canning by hand - but it’s not working out well for you. Either you need to can more beer faster, or the quality of the product isn’t holding up because you are hand filling cans off the tap and seaming on a single head manual seamer. Maybe you just need to keep your tap room cooler full or you are thinking about picking up a couple of additional accounts to sell your products. In any case, you’ve determined it’s time to consider scaling up with a little more

automation.

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Choosing Your Canning Line

There are a lot of options on the market from many different suppliers of canning systems. The system that you choose is best determined by the volume of cans you intend to package. Are you planning to package 10 cases, 100 cases or 1000 cases? The size of your brite tanks play into how much you are planning to can. It doesn’t make sense to oversize your

canning line if your brite tanks are too small. You will empty them in less time that it takes to clean the line!

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For example, if you have a 10 bbl brite tank and you want to package it all, that equates to roughly 3300 cans. If you get a

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My kettle is not coming clean! I have to physically get in the kettle and scrub after I run the CIP (clean in place) to remove the remaining soil!

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Unfortunately, this is a very common complaint of many craft brewers, especially in breweries that run multiple batches through the brewhouse between CIP runs. Why?

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Protein tends to bind to the metal and alkalinity by itself will not remove it. The soil is typically very soft and removes easily when wiped with a sponge or cloth but will not come off with the spray from the CIP nozzle. Many brewers accept this annoyance as “just the way it is”, but many astute brewers have long known or are now discovering that adding hydrogen peroxide (H202) to an alkaline cleaning solution can assist with

removing protein and calcium deposits in brewhouse cleaning.

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Chlorinated caustic cleaners, once popular for cleaning breweries, were found to cause serious damage to stainless steel including pitting and stress corrosion cracking (SCC).

Many brewers have since discontinued using chlorinated alkaline cleaners. Non-caustic, oxygenated alkaline powdered cleaners introduced in the 1990’s were and are still very

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Tom Hennessy, Colorado Boy Brewing

I have nothing against the brewers platform - that stainless throne that holds all those wonderful buttons and dials, but I want to make an argument for why it's a waste of money.

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Now I am talking about systems around 7 BBL's here. You really do need a platform for bigger systems and of course controls too, but most breweries are in the 7 BBL range so that's

what I am focusing on.

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First off, a platform will cost you about 5k for starters. If you include hard piping between your kettle, mash tun and hot liquor tanks, and another 4k, then if you have pumps and

switches the whole thing could be anywhere between 15 and 25k. All this for tanks that are at the most six feet tall. Crazy.

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Why not just go to Home Depot and buy a $75 platform ladder that has hand rails. Shoot, they even have wheels so you can roll it around.

 

Now I am going to get really crazy. Ditch the hard piping and the control panel, and instead have a pump on a cart, two lengths of good quality hot transfer hose and you are done. Your control now consists of one on and off switch on your 

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