Pic(k) of the Week: Rigging in the Tank

Riggers off-load a 150-barrel fermentation tank from a flat-bed truck and carefully hoist it into Heavy Seas Brewery.

Heavy Seas opened in 1995, in Halethorpe, just south of Baltimore City, Maryland, where it remains today. Its tank 'farm', as of May 2013, consists of 30 vessels: 23 fermenters and 7 maturation (or "bright") tanks, of which 4 are 200 barrels in volume, the remainder 100 or 150 barrels.

In 2012, Heavy Seas brewed more than 32,000 barrels of beer, making it the 69th largest American-owned brewery in the United States (out of 2,403). That was nearly a three-fold growth over 2008, four years earlier, when the brewery's output had been about 13,000 barrels.

22 May 2013.

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More pics of the tank rigging: here.

A barrel is not a keg or other container. It's a unit of volume measure, equal to 31 U.S. gallons. To put it in perspective, a barrel is the equivalent of 13.7 cases of twenty-four 12-ounce bottles. Thus, Heavy Seas' 2012 output was the equivalent of 10,722,496 bottles of beer.

The top 50 breweries (and 'craft' breweries) in the United States: here. A 2012 snapshot of the business of 'craft' brewing: here.

Caveat lector: As a representative for Select Wines, Inc. —a wine and beer wholesaler in northern Virginia— I sell the beers of Heavy Seas.

Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of personal photos, often posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always, with a good fermentable as a subject. Camera: Olympus Pen E-PL1. Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.