What You Need to Know about Maintaining Your Brewery’s Flooring

The brew­ing process can be quite messy. A sin­gle over­ac­tive fer­men­ta­tion can mean gal­lons of krausen spilling over your brewery’s floor. Keg­ging can also make a mess. Even just trans­fer­ring from the fer­menter to the bright tank can be an issue. There’s also the fact that you need to clean dirt and debris off your floors. Foot traf­fic alone can bring in a lot of dirt and debris. Add to that fork­lifts, hand trucks, rolled wood­en bar­rels and the like, and you have some very sig­nif­i­cant soiling.

Clean­ing brew­ery floors can be quite chal­leng­ing and you’ll need to take the right steps depend­ing on the con­di­tion and type of floor­ing and floor coat­ing you have.

What to Know About Brew­ery Flooring

What Is a Floor Coating?

Brew­ery floors put up with a lot. They must be able to not only stand the test of time, but also expo­sure to harsh chem­i­cals, lots of traf­fic, heavy loads, spills, Ther­mal shock (hot water wash) and more. A floor coat­ing helps ensure that your brew­ery floor­ing is up to the task.

A floor coat­ing is exact­ly what it sounds like: an over­laid appli­ca­tion that helps pro­tect the con­crete under it from the threats above, applied by a com­mer­cial painter and indus­tri­al floor­ing con­trac­tor. Floor coat­ings come in a num­ber of types, although epoxy is one of the most com­mon­ly used, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the beer brew­ing world. How­ev­er, it is not the only choice.

In fact, Ure­thane Cement should be installed in the fer­men­ta­tion and can­ning areas them­selves, where there is greater expo­sure to chem­i­cals and hot water. Epoxy is not durable enough to with­stand these con­di­tions on a reg­u­lar basis. Still, epoxy floor­ing is viable for oth­er parts of the brew­ery, such as stor­age areas, bath­rooms, and oth­er typ­i­cal use locations.

Rather than going with an epoxy floor sys­tem in areas oth­er than the brew­house and fer­men­ta­tion floor, you might also pre­fer to go with stained con­crete, which allows you to seal and pro­tect the floor­ing with­out a thick coat­ing of epoxy on top of it. Con­crete pol­ish­ing can also be used to pro­tect your floor if stain­ing and seal­ing is not an option. Pol­ish­ing allows you to reduce the per­me­abil­i­ty of the floor while also achiev­ing an aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing look.

Now that you know a bit more about brew­ery floor coat­ing options, let’s dis­cuss clean­ing and care.

Care with a Floor Coating

If your brewery’s floor is coat­ed, stained, or pol­ished, then you can clean it with con­fi­dence. You will need to wash the floor dai­ly. This is nec­es­sary to remove dirt and buildup, includ­ing old krausen, yeast, and oth­er microbes that could com­pro­mise the qual­i­ty of your prod­uct. A sim­ple wash­ing with water will suf­fice for many areas, but you may need to use a clean­ing prod­uct that is com­pat­i­ble with your floor sys­tem and brush­es in the case of heavy soiling.

It is impor­tant that you keep an eye on your floor­ing over time. Chips and dings must be repaired imme­di­ate­ly or the pro­tec­tion pro­vid­ed by the coat­ing will be com­pro­mised. A sin­gle chip can allow mois­ture, bac­te­ria, and chem­i­cals into the under­ly­ing con­crete, caus­ing major prob­lems. More­over, it’s pret­ty easy to dam­age a con­crete floor. A sin­gle dropped keg could be enough to dam­age it.

Care with­out a Floor Coating

If you do not have any type of floor coat­ing for your brew­ery floor­ing, it is vital that you rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion. You need more than just a trench drain in the cen­ter of the floor to wick away water and spilled beer. You need to ensure that the floor is pro­tect­ed against the dam­age that ethanol can cause to unpro­tect­ed con­crete. Even the cleansers used to clean your fer­menters, bright tank, kegs, and oth­er equip­ment will quick­ly degrade unpro­tect­ed con­crete flooring.

Know­ing the options avail­able from paint­ing and con­crete floor­ing ser­vices is vital. As men­tioned above, there are sev­er­al dif­fer­ent floor­ing solu­tions that can be used with­in a brew­ery set­ting. How­ev­er, you need to con­sid­er the sit­u­a­tion before mov­ing for­ward. Even some­thing as sim­ple as the heat/​cold cycle involved with tak­ing boil­ing wort down to fer­ment­ing tem­per­a­tures can be prob­lem­at­ic as the ther­mal cycle can cause rapid expan­sion and con­trac­tion that very quick­ly destroys infe­ri­or floor­ing types and coatings.

Oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions when choos­ing your floor­ing type include how slip resis­tant the floor­ing is when wet (a sig­nif­i­cant con­sid­er­a­tion in the world of brew­ing!), and how eas­i­ly the floor can be cleaned. A slop­ing floor sys­tem made with a resinous mate­r­i­al that requires noth­ing more than water and a deck brush could be ideal.

At Kaloutas and Indus­tri­al Floor­ing, we have years of expe­ri­ence work­ing with brew­eries to find the ide­al floor­ing solu­tion to their needs. We invite you to get in touch with us at 978−532−1414 to learn more about how our indus­tri­al painters can serve you.

Kaloutas is New Eng­land’s pre­mier con­trac­tor for com­mer­cial & indus­tri­al paint­ing, floor­ing, and relat­ed ser­vices. Estab­lished in 1987, Kaloutas has become a trust­ed resource for gen­er­al con­trac­tors, facil­i­ties man­agers, and build­ing own­ers from Con­necti­cut to Maine. Our team prides itself on high qual­i­ty work­man­ship, jobs done on time & bud­get, and tack­ling com­plex projects that oth­er con­trac­tors don’t have the expe­ri­ence or resources to han­dle. Con­tact us today for a paint­ing or floor­ing esti­mate, or give us a call at 978−532−1414 to learn more.