Craft beer maker brews up new solutions for cooling and cleaning
Pipe corrosion problems, leaks and puddles are now a thing of the past.
Sierra Nevada Brewing Company started out as a microbrewery in 1980 in Chico, CA. Since then, it has grown to become the sixth-largest brewery in America and recently built a facility in North Carolina. Even though breweries have a long history of using metal piping to cool beer and handle waste, both of Sierra Nevada’s breweries bucked tradition and incorporated two different types of plastic piping systems—a COOL-FIT system for secondary cooling and refrigeration and a Fuseal system for hot, corrosive waste drainage.
Rick Callow, manager of process piping for Sierra Nevada, Chico, was instrumental in implementing the piping systems installed in the Chico plant and consulted for the new facility in North Carolina. In 2007, the company first considered the GF COOL-Fit system for the Chico plant. After receiving training from GF, Sierra Nevada installed a trial system consisting of 100 feet of 140mm-diameter COOL-FIT Plus ABS pre-insulated pipe and fittings and ran 30 percent polypropylene glycol mixed with water at 26.5°F.