Purchasing decisions come every day. Some are day-in, day-out needs that are taken care of on a whim while others mean major changes and investments for your brewery.
Niki Bates of Great Northern Brewing and Zak Koga of Karben4 each shared a recent purchase that is helping in terms of return on investment along with moving their brewery forward.
Cans:
Located in Whitefish, Montana, Great Northern‘s team lives in the land of mountains, lakes and rivers.
“Cans are much safer to take on hikes and boats than bottles and will allow our beer to be enjoyed by the outdoor enthusiasts that live here and visit from around the globe each year,” explained Bates, who is the marketing and retail manager. She said the brewery recently purchased a canning line as well as new kegging equipment, which will ‘really change the game.’
“It will increase our production by 25 percent,” she said. “[It] allows for easier and further transport and give us overall improvements in packaging.”
Pilot System:
A more robust pilot system is online for Madison, Wisconsin’s Karben4. It has includes one-barrel fermenters and Koga said it was an immediate ROI.
“We paid for it immediately by improving our ability to propagate yeast and the pilot experiments have boomed,” the co-founder of the brewery explained. “Buying that system and then formally scheduling those brews as shift work was something we should have done sooner.”
Carbing Manager:
Another system Karben4 recently installed is The FizzWizz, a carbonation manager.
“It is not a very expensive piece of equipment and manages the carbonation of your beer so much better than the most basic force-carbonation methods,” Koga explained. “We always recommend this equipment to our peers (that are a) small to medium-sized brewery.”
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