Brewery Maintenance 101

Want your brewery to meet FDA regulations, maintain hygiene and safety standards, and continue producing high-quality beverages? Here’s what you’ve got to do.

Avoid Microbial Contamination of Floors

Breweries are typically humid spaces, with all the heating and cooling going on for alcohol production. This humid atmosphere can be a breeding ground for the growth of microorganisms and formation of biofilm, especially under the bases of the vessels and tanks that aren’t directly attached to the floor.

Care must be taken to seal the gaps between the tank bases and the floor. This can be done using concrete or a chemical sealant to prevent microbial contamination of the brewery floors.

Keep Your Brewery Vessels Sanitized & Clean

Cleanliness of your equipment is of utmost importance! It’s absolutely crucial that you thoroughly clean all your vessels including secondary containers such as buckets, vials, and hand tools, on a regular basis.

This is especially necessary if the tools are moved around the brewery or outside of it, as this increases the risk of cross-contamination. Using brewing equipment without having cleaned and sterilized them can seriously contaminate your final product. While it’s often alright to keep using the same tanks during a single cycle, these must be properly sanitized after all the batches have been prepared.

Implement Spare Part Management

Not establishing a plan for spare parts management of the different tools and equipment you use can seriously slow down your productivity in a crisis situation. Of course, you can’t possibly stock spare vessels and tanks in your brewery, but you do need to have a plan of action ready to use when one of these tools highlight a problem.

A good way to do this is to categorize your bewaring equipment into three categories. The first is of spare parts that have the greatest criticality and need to be replaced ASAP. A delay on their replacement will severely affect your brewery’s efficiency, and you need the highest quality inventory for these to avoid such circumstances.

The second category is for spare parts that you don’t necessarily need to store, but can count on getting from your supplier on short notice. The third category is for spare parts for which you can afford a few weeks long delivery period, without it significantly impacting your business. These are usually parts on which you can detect damage before it escalates, and place an order for their replacement in advance.

Optimizing your brewery’s spare part management can help you maintain efficiency and productivity levels. However, it’s imperative that you collaborate with a reliable and renowned brewery equipment supplier for this to be a success.

Cedarstone Industry is a brewing equipment manufacturer that stocks a diverse range of tools and vessels required for alcohol production, including brewing systems, keg washers, and fermentation tanks.

Call us at (281) 397-3700 to learn more about our services!