County plumbing inspection - grease trap for yeast

[HitB Brewery]

Arig and Markets is if you filed a wholesale license. Essentially all breweries do. In NY state the license is "Artice 20-c" license. Look that up. Also if you are in NY and do a Farm Brewery license you are exempt for the 20c but still need an initial inspection from Arg and Markets. They want this done after state licensing but before you open.

Awesome, thanks! If you've done this, is the turnaround long? We will not be a farm brewery.

[S.Foster]

Grease recovery system

Here is an alternative to the grease trap or grease interceptor (1000 gallon grease trap tanks) you may be looking for, print out the certification and ask your inspector if this will be accepted by him: http://www.miracle-microbes.com/ goto GREASE RECOVERY SYSTEMS and take a look there. Good luck.

[BeachBrew]

Call your county water dept and discuss the issue. I think you will find that they will help you with the question of disposing yeast down the drain.


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[HitB Brewery]

Now everyone is scared and apparently we're about to break the entire city's plumbing system!

Ok, not quite but now we're being asked to provide a "discharge report," detailing exact what will go down the drain.

My initial thought was PBW, Star San, a little beer, water and yeast, but I wanted to gather the opinion of people who have submitted something of this ilk prior.

I am thinking they believe us to be putting far more down the drain than we really will be, and that it will be far more sinister than what it is.

Thanks again, everyone, for your help with this. Who knew drains could be so involved?

[RocketRepublic]

We spec'd an in ground concrete 750 gal grease trap per our plumber and governing authority. They wouldn't approve the plan unless it was changed out with a 1000 gallon grease trap with two man-hole covers a truck could drive over, despite it being located in a place that will never receive vehicle traffic.

We're not the first brewery in our area and "everyone has one" so we had to have one, too. I'm not 100% convinced the governing authorities know why they should or should not require it other than everyone else is doing it. The way it was explained to me (by another brewer) is that it's not just yeast but particulate matter as well.

[jebzter]

Where we're at, we had to submit plans to the sewer department, and they determined the need for things like this. Much smarter people there. All they wanted was a sample box for them to pull quarterly samples. The inspectors job was to verify we were building per the plans. I second going to the economic development office, they can pull strings to get things done quickly, usually the cities don't want to loose small businesses.

[Jeff Luskey]

It is unbelievable the range of inconsistencies between governing bodies and what they require of breweries. We had to purchase a wastewater treatment plant to be used in the future in case the brewery grows, to satisfy our county before they would even think about signing off on our compliance certificate to brew 3 bbl batches. Lots of hoop jumping....

[murmsk]

It shows an alarming lack of understanding of the basics of their job. The scarey thing is if they don't understand how yeast differs from fat what else don't they understand. Sadly most inspectors vision of them selves precludes having a discussion.

Thankfully ours were great, they asked questions and did some research before handing down their ruling.

steve

[HitB Brewery]

We spec'd an in ground concrete 750 gal grease trap per our plumber and governing authority. They wouldn't approve the plan unless it was changed out with a 1000 gallon grease trap with two man-hole covers a truck could drive over, despite it being located in a place that will never receive vehicle traffic.

We're not the first brewery in our area and "everyone has one" so we had to have one, too. I'm not 100% convinced the governing authorities know why they should or should not require it other than everyone else is doing it. The way it was explained to me (by another brewer) is that it's not just yeast but particulate matter as well.

Where are you located, Rocket?

[hmenik]

We are going through the same situation as we are also from Onondaga County. I had already spoken with Ag & Mkts and they stated, that I do not need a grease trap. Now the plumbing inspector has told my contractor that we need 3 grease traps when we are only brewing from a small system with no food preparation. Have you found a resolution to this issue yet? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[hokus]

We have the entity that is in charge of local building code inspections as a good customer (all their employees hang out in our pub). We recently added some new concrete flooring and drains. They were mentioning that it is apparently IBC that any new floor drain installation must have grease traps. Luckily they were smart enough to realize this is insane to make us install and sort of 'looked the other way' because we don't have a kitchen.

I have a feeling more and more small cash straped start ups will run into this situation. Hope your local inspectors are good to work with. Typically economic development folks are also good to have on your side.

Our sewer authority also asked for a report of what would be dumped into the drain. Our local authority actually likes that yeast/trub is going in the system, they claim it actually helps the treatment plant because it gives their little critters something to eat and allows them to not have to add. Cleaning chemicals in proper dilutions are usually no issue.