Serving vessels

[MerakiBrewing]

Hey all,

Can you all chime in on the pros/cons of serving from brites as opposed to kegs?

My plan is to have a 15bbl brewhouse. Distribution is a small part of the business plan, most sales are expected to come from taproom sales (if that impacts which solution is better).

Thanks!

Travis
Meraki Brewing Company

[brewfun]

The Pros of serving from brights are time, space and energy. Simply, it's one big bottle to clean and fill. Less labor to fill and chilling with glycol is a lot more efficient than a cold box. No need for space to store dirty and cleaned kegs.

Just make sure you can disconnect the serving lines to clean without having to empty the tank. It always surprises me how often that gets overlooked.

Cons to bright tanks.... hmmm... Can't think of any....

[Mike Elliott]

You'll need to have keg lines as well, I think.

We serve out of four brites and three keg lines. When we need to rack from a fermentor, we just keg off the least full brite for service on the keg line and pop the new beer in. If we didn't have the ability to serve from kegs we'd have to wait till every drop was drunk before racking.

We have two options for kegs, also: we use an under-bar cooler for three flavors all the time, but we can also tap a keg into the brite tank beer line if we want. Keep flexible or you'll be sorry.

[porter]

Brights

15 bbl brewhouse?

You're going to want to go with bright tanks. Assuming you yield 13 bbl on most beers, that's 26 x 1/2 bbl kegs to deal with for every brand. If I were planning a brewpub these days (or pushing most beer through a taproom) I would have 10 bright tanks if the space allowed.

I think of bright tanks as giant kegs. I agree with brewfun's assessment- the pros are time, space and energy.

[MerakiBrewing]

Thanks for the advice!

I had planned on 8 brites to start. But then I talked to a stainless manufacturer who paused when I asked for a quote for 8, and said "hm, that's a lot of brites..." So, I wanted to confirm my plan with you guys.

Thanks again, cheers!