Greetings!
I just attended a meeting set up by the local chapter of American Society for Quality (ASQ). The meeting was a tour of the Anheuser-Busch brewery facility in Merrimack, NH(now part of AB InBev). Suffice to say, there was very little that was going to keep me from this gathering. After all, quality IS everywhere - and what better place to do research on the topic. Yes, they do serve fresh and very tasty grain beverages at the conclusion of the tour, which was a draw for me ..... a really big draw; however, I did want to see their assembly line in action as well. Although AB claims that this is the smallest of their US breweries, I have heard it can pump out a prodigious amount of beer per day. I felt compelled to get to the bottom of this rumor ....
I arrived early that evening - just to make sure I didn't miss a moment of the tour. We started late - surprisingly because some folks didn't show up on time. The delay made me even more thirsty for ... err ... information about that famous assembly line.
I was very surprised to learn that AB focuses very heavily on water conservation. Not only is water the main ingredient in beer, it is also used heavily in early phases of the brewing process in the making of wort (an ingredient for brewing beer) and is then drained off, filtered, and used again in the the massive containers for fermenting the beer that have to be washed between each usage. There were 15 vats used just for the fermentation process alone and are cleaned every 21 days. To give you an idea of just how large these vats are, it would take one person drinking 1 case of beer every day for 45 years to empty the vat. Talk about a metric with meaning!
AB is known for their beechwood aging process, and they actually take pieces of the wood, sterilize them 6 times, then lay them in the vat to be part of the fermentation process. And, they re-use the wood 6 times before grinding them up and sending it off to local landscapers to be used as mulch. Is that why I see so many folks on their hands and knees spreading mulch with a smile on their faces?? See what I mean about the eco-friendly brewing process - and not one mention on the tour of how this is part of their ISO 14000 compliance efforts.
The beer is quality checked 32 times in the 30 days it takes to make a beer. And, it isn't done by a couple of guys sticking ladles into the top of the keg for a taste either - but rather through a lab based approach to determine alcohol content, consistently, temperature and a host of other elements being measured that we unfortunately were not able to view - I suspect it's too close to their 'special sauce' information.
When we arrived at the assembly line, I was fascinated by a number of things. First, the sheer speed of the line. Bottles are being washed, sterilized, labeled, filled with beer, capped and pasteurized before being boxed and trucked off the property. The current output rate the evening we were there was 62,000 cases of beer/ day!! Fellow quality members and I almost came to tears when we saw full bottles of beer falling off the line and breaking on the floor. It just seemed wrong on so many levels. They said not to worry, they do measure waste, but to achieve their optimal output rates, they will break a few bottles now and again. It's true, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs .... but seeing bottles of beer encountering an early demise on the floor was hard to watch. To minimize breakage, they send a constant steam of soap and water on the conveyor belts that allows for easier bottle movement with less breakage - again, with recycled and filtered water from upstream processes. The floor is washed (more water usage) very 2 hours to insure safety of employees and to keep the place from smelling like Sunday morning at your local college dorm.
Not only was it mesmerizing to watch the bottles whirl and swirl along the line, it also made us all incredibly thirsty. I was fully prepared to chew through steel to have a sip of the beverage if , for some reason, they concluded the tour without a whiff of the grain beverage. Thankfully, the great folks at AB concluded the tour in their 'lounge' where folks could partake in 2 beers of their choice.
The folks at AB are geniuses. The tour showed the brewery to be very clean and organized, the smell of hops in the air intoxicating, and the sight of thousands upon thousands of gallons of beer being loaded into bottles and cans a feast for the eyes. You leave the brewery thinking that AB is just about the best place in the world.
At the conclusion of one of the happiest ASQ meetings I have been to in a while, friends were made, quality issues that were thrown out on the table next to the pretzels for discussion were (seemly) resolved, and a new appreciation for what it takes to build a world class brewery and distribution center was gained. Thank you AB - and cheers!
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