How could we forget?
Sometimes we move so quickly from one project to the next, that we forget to keep everyone in the loop. Bellaire wasn’t the only Short’s facility to receive some fancy new upgrades. Here’s a message from Joe, along with some cool pics, about the amazing new fermenters we installed in Elk Rapids almost two months ago! The images are of the SBC crew lowering tanks into the ER facility through a makeshift hole they created in the roof. This was also the day we saw some of the first snow flurries of the year.
Enjoy,
SBC Crew
Today at 211 Industrial Park Drive, Elk Rapids Michigan, the maintenance team and the brewing staff in ER ripped a hole in the roof and deployed 4 brand new, 100 barrel tanks! This puts us at roughly double fermentation capacity. Very cool stuff. I have to say it went very smooth. The roof seemed to be the most troublesome and even at that was still not too much of a hassle. The crane from Elmer’s made lifting and moving the tanks down into the brewery a cinch.
These tanks were designed by the Short’s Brewing staff to fit inside our building, cater to our brewing style, hold as much beer as possible while keeping safety in mind. The bottom of the cone is one of two points of access making it easy for personnel to clean and inspect the tank from ground level. The other access point is the top man way, which was designed to accommodate a lot of hops or whatever else we like to put in our beer. These tanks will hold 3 batches at once. Classified as “unitanks” we will be able to ferment beer, carbonate beer and package beer from the same tank. This makes our operation more efficient, with less beer to transfer or additional tanks to clean and uses less water and energy.
Our new babies were made by Sprinkman Mfg. out of Wisconsin, and we’re proud to have American made vessels in our brewery. It’s likely we’ll have beer in these tanks within two weeks.
Cheers!
Joe Short
