(Asheville, NC) – The Highland Brewing Monday newsletter brought news that Razor Wit is the company’s best-selling seasonal to date. The company brewed two additional batches just to make it into August. Clawhammer Oktoberfest will return as the next seasonal at the beginning of September.
Highland also recently put in some new flooring. More on that below…
—
Clearing the Floor for Stonhard Installation
“Can you get as much as you can off the floor and out of the way?” said the Stonhard representative, surrounded by heavy, complex equipment.
Imagine it – our 20,000 square foot brewery with a ton of specialty grains, pallets of bottles and boxes, the bottling line, the medley line, the keg washer, the 20-foot high metal shelves, chemicals, hoses, yeast propagator, kegs… It’s hard to keep up with the growth already and essentially dismantling the brewery would add to the pressure. This effort would be monumental.
But we did it. Took the brewery apart, moved it out of the way, redid the floors and put it all back together – in less than a week. You won’t even see a blip on the beer supply radar.
Why We Did It
Cleaning agents and even beer erode concrete. Concrete can also absorb water and harbor bacteria. But Stonhard is impervious, shedding water, minimizing bacteria and protecting the concrete. There’s no such thing as “too clean.” Investing in the floor is investing in our beer.
What We Did
When brewing and packaging about 600 barrels a week, shutting down for three days is significant. The production team put in a tremendous amount of planning, preparation and extra hours. Brewers worked an entire weekend before the shut down so the beer was ahead of schedule. Packaging staff built up inventory, breaking records for cases packed in a day – 3,000 – so we could keep up with orders. Everything moveable was disassembled and repositioned, stacked, or hung – conveyors were even suspended from chains attached to the ceiling.
The Stonhard team came in Thursday, Friday and Saturday, ground down the cement floors, filled the cuts with flexible urethane, laid mortar, and applied sealant. Even the pilot system room has a new floor.
The last challenge, and the biggest, said Brewmaster John Lyda, was putting it all back together. “But it was fairly easy with all hands on deck,” he added. Sunday was not a day of rest, and by the end of Monday, we were back in business.