Erie Ale Works is a 5 barrel, direct-fire brewery located near the center of Erie, Pa. on West 12th Street. Our space is quite industrial with a lot of DIY-inspired elements thrown throughout. We have always put the beer ahead of it all so you won’t find any fancy finishes or woodwork. When you walk in, you’re greeted with exposed ceiling girders, rock music, a walk-in cooler covered in stickers, and a hand built plywood shelving unit behind the bar.

Currently, there are two employees, myself and Steve. Steve is the brewer and I handle the marketing and event planning. We have built the place ourselves and most likely are the one serving you your pint when you hang out.

It’s an exciting time for our business, we’re seeing unprecedented revenue growth and are kicking out some killer beers that are drank faster than we can keep up at times. 99% of our business activity happens within our four walls with the assistance of local food truck partners and our proximity to a handful of other local breweries like The Brewerie at Union Station, Lavery Brewing Company, and Voodoo Brewery.

What Happened

Any brewery contains a series of conical bottom, temperature-controlled, stainless steel fermenters where the liquid we brew is introduced to a specific yeast, fermenting the liquid into beer. A happy fermentation happens at a very particular temperature, just like good French Press coffee is made at PRECISELY 195° F. The tank temperature is controlled by a machine on our rooftop called a ‘glycol chiller,’ which is in effect a giant radiator like the one in your car. The ability to control temperature is critical to producing a quality product and without that ability we simply can’t operate.

We currently have three fermentation tanks situated right next to the brewhouse. Our lack of available exterior space prompted us to mount the chiller to the roof directly above the main production area. It keeps the chilling unit out of our way and didn’t require us to fence it in like other breweries do.

On Christmas Day we encountered some serious snowfall followed by bitter cold temperatures. Mother Nature kicked our chilling unit right in the gut. To keep it not-too-technical, the extreme weather conditions exploited a small puncture in the unit’s receiver tank, a puncture that, unbeknownst to us, seems to have come from the factory.

The compromised chiller ruined two whole batches of beer, destroyed some plumbing and our flow pump. We lost three weeks of production time plus incurred all sorts of repair bills that weren’t in any budget. Suddenly, we had racked up a seriously impressive maintenance expense that made our heads spin. On top of that, the weather was now unfavorable to perform any repairs, you can’t fix plumbing issues when it’s below freezing. Great!

Here’s A Good Way To Relate What Happened

Buy a new motorcycle Wreck it Overnight all the parts to fix the motorcycle Wait for good weather to install the new parts Finally install the new parts only to find another problem Wait for good weather again Cross your fingers Rework the entire drivetrain that blew out because of the wreck Test it Turn the key, let it warm up Pay the two separate repair shops while waiting on your insurance guy who’s suddenly swamped with an enormous amount of wrecks!

As a business owner, each day’s operation is potentially the most exciting/scariest of your life. This was the scariest problem our company had ever faced. It had the potential to completely cripple us.

No Panicking Allowed