From Germany to Anderson Valley
There’s copper in our brewhouse
If you look carefully at the onioned-domed copper vessels in the AVBC brewhouse, you’ll see the peen marks from the hammers of the German craftsman who hand-shaped them. They’re a small but visible reminder that things made by hand are more interesting, that their subtle imperfections are actually anything but.
It’s no accident that these copper vessels, a physical embodiment of the brewery’s commitment to craftsmanship at the highest level, sit at the core of the Anderson Valley brewhouse. The entire building was actually designed and then built around them, with tubes and pipes of all sizes emanating outwards like arteries from a heart.
How did these Bavarian vessels made by the famed Huppmann Maschinfabrik of Kitzingen, Germany get to Anderson Valley? That’s a story too. It involves several months of back-and-forth negotiations with a German industrial broker in Frankenmuth Michigan, some trips into East Germany right after the wall came down, and of course a few beers.
“We were over there for three months disassembling two brewhouses we negotiated to buy, gathering all the pipes and wiring and basically anything we could salvage and stuff it into some shipping containers,” said Rod DeWitt, AVBC’s Director of Engineering. “Didn’t pass a brewery without stopping in to say ‘hi’ but we worked our asses off. My wife hardly recognized me when we came home.”
It would be another two years, and countless hours spent retrofitting and hand-fabricating a system that melded traditional German craftsmanship with modern(ish) technology before the first batches of Boont Amber made their way through the new brewhouse in Boonville.
“That was actually one of my first jobs at the brewery,” said brewmaster Fal Allen. “The owner at the time said “Ok, let’s figure out how to brew with this thing.” So we did…and we have.”
When repairs were needed several years ago, a call was placed to Huppmann. They still had the original 30+ year old drawings of the copper vessels now in Anderson Valley. Replacement parts were designed and fabricated off the original drawings and shipped from Germany to California. Sure enough, they slid right in, with tolerances of less than 1/16 of an inch. Hand-crafted excellence that stands the test of time, a perfect totem for the brewery they sit at the heart of.
