CDC Kettle - What does CDC stand for?

[system101]

Hi Everyone,
I've been working on setting up a craft/micro brewery for the past few months and we are in our final stages to begin production. I have a few question on the kettle I purchased, it is a 7BBL CDC Direct Fire which I purchased used from AgerTank(many thanks!).

* What does CDC stand for?
* Are they still in business?

I'm just curious as I wanted to know the exact size of my kettle as it appears to hold somewhere in the neighborhood of 360 gallons.

Any info would be helpful.

Thanks in advance!

-Justin

[pjbroyles]

We have a CDC mash tun, 7bbl boil kettle (steam fired) and 3 15 bbl fermenters we bought used 3+ years ago. The company is Cross Distributing Co and they are no longer in business.

I think Mt Emily Alehouse in LaGrande Oregon has a 7bbl CDC direct fired kettle as well.

Our volume on the tank is listed at 288 gallons.

[gitchegumee]

We've got a "10 bbl" kettle that is really an 8 bbl. Not the best out there, by far. Too tall & narrow for effective boil and whirlpool. If you want to know your volume, use math! It's a cylindrical tank, eh? More accurate than trying to measure water into it. Good luck!

[Moonlight]

tank is listed at 288 gallons...could be imperial gallons.

Johnny Cross contracted with the major UK breweries to buy something like 95% of all the Grundy (and similar) tanks that were owned by all the breweries when they became obsolete in about the late 1970's He and his company extracted tens of thousands of these tanks from all over the UK and shipped them mostly to fledgling 7 barrel breweries around the world. (Because these were, and still are, cheap 217 US gallon sanitary tanks, most start-up breweries of that era used these tanks to save money- and the 7-barrel brewery was born!) If you have ever seen a Grundy or a 7 barrel system, it was because of Johnny. When all the tanks were exported, he moved to central California and started making and modifying tanks. His best skills were in negotiation and distribution.