Question List for a Brewery Equipment Factory Visit

A factory visit is the best-value hour you will ever spend on quality control, provided you arrive with written questions rather than a look around. Hermann Biological Engineering publishes five inspection steps behind every shipment — materials, production, jacket pressure testing, packing and loading, and a finished-product leak test — and every tank carries a data plate with its pressure-test record and serial number. Take that list into the hall and ask the team to show you where each step actually happens.

Before you book the visit

Send the question list ahead. A factory that knows what you intend to ask will arrange for the production manager and not only a salesperson to be in the room, and the answers arrive with drawings instead of adjectives. Hermann has spent 23 years on craft brewing equipment design and has sold into more than seventy countries, so the questions a new brewery asks are ones the team has heard before.

Also decide which one decision you are trying to make. Some buyers visit to compare a 1,000 litre and a 2,000 litre system; others visit to settle heating, the control package or a distillery addition. A visit with one objective produces a shortlist; a visit without one produces a folder of photographs. The about the company page is the quickest way to brief yourself on the design and export record before you arrive.

Questions about welding, finish and materials

Start at the fabrication bay and ask which welding process is used on the vessel shells, the jackets and the pipework, and whether the joints are ground and polished afterwards. Ask what surface finish the wetted parts are taken to, how that finish is measured, and which grade of stainless steel the quotation assumes. Stainless steel 304 and 316 are both normal choices; the answer to check for is that the grade is written into the drawing rather than chosen on the floor.

Then ask what happens when a finish does not pass. A factory worth visiting has a documented answer: the vessel is reworked before it moves on, and the rework appears in the inspection record rather than in a story told later. The published inspection sequence begins with materials checking precisely because the least expensive place to catch a wrong plate is before it is cut.

Questions about test records and traceability

The jacket question is the one worth asking slowly. Ask at what point the cooling jacket is pressure-tested, what pressure is used, who signs the result, and what happens to the vessel between the test and the moment insulation is applied. Ask to see a completed inspection record for an order that has already shipped, and check that it covers the five published steps in order.

Then ask about the data plate. Every tank should carry its pressure-test record and serial number, and you should see how that plate is fixed to the vessel. Ask what a buyer receives with the shipment besides the hardware: the checking list that travels with the goods, the packing plan the loading team works from, and confirmation that equipment is packed in wooden boxes for transport.

Questions about spares, service and the delivery window

On spare parts, ask which soft items the factory recommends holding for your configuration: manway gaskets, tri-clamp seals, valve seats, pump seals and sight glass seals are the usual answers. Ask how quickly a part can be shipped and who to contact outside office hours. The published service terms include sales and engineers online 24 hours and 7×24 after-sales support, which is the phrase worth writing into your own maintenance notes.

Finally, settle the schedule. From deposit to door delivery the published range is 90–150 days depending on the order, so ask which part of that band your configuration sits in and which items move it. Valves, pipework, the steam boiler and any distillery or malting equipment added to the order are the usual causes. Ask the same question in the hall where the vessels are being built and you will hear an answer rooted in the current production plan rather than a brochure figure.

The published Brewery/Distillery/Winery All-In-One Solution framing is a useful place to start the product conversation, because the list behind it runs from mash, fermentation and yeast handling through filtration, CIP, filling and control systems, and on to distillery equipment, malting equipment, bright tanks and canning, bottling and kegging machines.

The question list in one table

Worked example: filling a one-day visit

Assume a single day in the factory, roughly six working hours, which is 6 × 60 = 360 minutes. Allow 45 minutes for the opening briefing and order review, 90 minutes walking the fabrication and finishing bays, 45 minutes on the jacket test and the inspection records, 30 minutes on spares and service, and 30 minutes on the schedule and the quotation — a total of 45 + 90 + 45 + 30 + 30 = 240 minutes, leaving 360 − 240 = 120 minutes for the questions that come up on the way around.

Then count the record work for a typical four-vessel order. Five published inspection stages across a brewhouse and three tanks come to as many as 4 × 5 = 20 inspection entries plus four data plates, and asking to see two completed examples costs perhaps 10 minutes each. Now compare that with the cost of discovering an untested jacket after installation: the same defect found in the hall is a schedule item, while the same defect found on site is a freight, service and rework conversation. The arithmetic is illustrative, and the assumptions are the ones written here, but the trade is plain — 20 minutes of records against weeks of argument.

Frequently asked questions

What should I ask to see on the factory floor?

Ask to see the five published inspection stages in the place they happen: materials checking, production inspection, the jacket pressure test, packing and loading, and the finished leak test.

Which documents should I ask for before signing?

A sample inspection record for a shipped order, a sample data plate, the warranty wording in writing, and the expected loading date inside the published 90–150 day window from deposit to door delivery.

Turn the answers into an order document

Write the answers into the enquiry before the quotation is finalised, so that the steel grade, the finish, the inspection record, the checking list and the delivery window all appear as requirements rather than as recollections of a good day out. A supplier who is asked to confirm each one in writing will either do so or explain why not, and both outcomes are useful.

The brewery equipment catalogue is the list to mark up as you walk the bays, so that each answer is tied to a page rather than to a memory. Keep the finished list for the next order too. The questions change far less than the equipment does, and the second visit is quicker because the first one produced a document you can hand over. Send any question the team could not answer on the floor to the contact page in writing, so the reply arrives as a document you can file.

The inspection steps, warranty wording, service terms and delivery window quoted above come from the manufacturer's own website, read 23 Sept 2026, and the visit and record arithmetic is our own example with its assumptions stated in the text.^[1] Ask for the current documents rather than relying on a summary, including this one.