A lot of hardware goes into making beer, and enterprising homebrewers are skilled at cobbling together the gear they need, whether it’s a cooler mash tun or a hopback built from plumbing parts. Once a brewer goes pro, the ability to get the most out of limited resources becomes even more important.
Working on the edge of their production capacity with tight margins and growth can compound these challenges. The pains that come with expansion provide the resourceful brewer with ample problem-solving opportunities, and any incremental improvements to process and efficiency can help them make better, more consistent beer. When Smog City Brewing in Los Angeles took over a warehouse near their production brewery to house a growing collection of wine barrels, Founder and Brewmaster Jonathan Porter needed to balance making the regular production beer that keeps the lights on in the brewery with all the additional tasks required to process and fill all that oak.
“Barrels aren’t cheap, but all the labor they need is the bigger investment,” Porter says. “There’s a lot of money in that oak,” he says, gesturing toward the barrel warehouse, “and it’s slow to return any revenue.”