We’re feeling elated—we just ordered our brewery equipment! Few decisions in this process, if any, have felt as momentous as this. We are, after all, opening a brewery in order to make beer exactly how we want to. We want to decoct our Czech-style Pilsener and do a step mash with a Beta Glucan rest for our Witbier. Our equipment has to allow us to make these beers just the way we want–we needed to know that the folks who build our equipment are just as passionate about quality as we.
We were only recently introduced to our equipment provider: Quality Tank Solutions. QTS is based outside Milwaukee and manufactures all its equipment in Wisconsin. It didn’t take long for them to convince us that they have the passion and experience we were looking for. We got to spend a day visiting a bunch of breweries that brew with QTS’ equipment. In the end, we feel confident that they will make us a brewery able to do what we need it to.
We had been skeptical that we could afford American-made equipment. We knew that we *wanted* to buy American, but between the need to carefully manage our money and the fact that there is cheaper but still good quality brewery equipment being made in Asia, it was difficult for us as a start-up business to justify paying more for American-made.
What made it possible is that QTS changed the calculus from being purely a comparison between brewery equipment costs to a comparison of equipment costs plus installation and commissioning.
Once the equipment arrives, it all needs to be rigged into place and installed. The boiler needs to be commissioned and the steam piping run and connected. The glycol chiller needs to be installed and glycol piping run. The walk-in chillers need to be assembled and started up. The list goes on.
As part of their value proposition, QTS has assembled a team of installers and includes installation as part of their service. For us, having the company who made the equipment install it and saving us money over assembling a team of individual contractors by doing so was a no-brainer.
We are excited to know our brewery is being built and are happy that QTS made it a lot easier to say yes to buying American. Now we can’t wait to be brewing. It can’t happen soon enough.
