Duplicating a Brewery, Coast to Coast

The Challenge

In 2011, Paul Mueller Company, Adaptive Stainless (then known as Mueller Field Operations, Inc.), and Mueller Transportation Inc. partnered with Green Flash Brewing, a craft brewery, to build a production brewery in San Diego, California. With their popular brews and innovative marketing skills, Green Flash Brewing quickly needed more production capacity and started considering adding additional locations.

In 2015, Green Flash Brewing announced plans to build a brewery in Virginia Beach, Virginia. This new location across the country would allow Green Flash Brewing to cut distribution costs greatly. However, it also posed a challenge. For the project to succeed, they required strict duplication of their San Diego brewery to ensure product consistency and to maintain brand identity.

"We took a trip out to San Diego to see the integration… We took our time with scope development and understanding what our customer needed in their new facility. We have learned the places it's okay to change, the places where it needs to stay the same, and we've successfully executed a duplicate brewery all while staying true to the brand."

The Journey

Green Flash Brewing quickly decided to partner with Paul Mueller Company again for this project. Having built their first facility—which largely contributed to their success—they were confident in our ability to take on the task of building this new duplicate brewery.

During the initial project planning, Green Flash Brewing decided that Mueller would be in charge of construction and the control system throughout the project. The collaborative team could design a building exactly like Green Flash Brewing wanted. As the team collaborated on layout, brewing equipment and installation plans were developed.

The Solution

The team started by traveling to San Diego to review the original integration. The team started by traveling to San Diego to review the original integration. The brewhouse and cellar vessels were built at the Paul Mueller Company headquarters in Springfield, Missouri. The system was piped up, connected, tested, and the electrical controls were installed. Through collaboration with Adaptive Stainless and Mueller Transportation Inc., the equipment was then able to be disassembled into several strategic pieces to ship to the project site.

In the end, the beautiful 250,000-barrel production brewery was a showcase for Green Flash, Paul Mueller Company, and Adaptive Stainless. The brewery has since been sold and is the Virginia Beach location of New Realm Brewing.

"Then we go out and set the system back up, we have had some customers who try to do that themselves, it's so much better if we can pull our field operations team in, just put the whole thing back together. Seamless transition from shop build to installing the facility.”

Project Details

Greatly Reduced Production Costs by Creating a Duplicate Brewery on the East Coast
The Brewhouse was built at the Paul Mueller Headquarters and Shipped in Strategic Pieces to the Project Site
The Showcase Facility has Become a Go-To Destination in the Virginia Beach Community