The kombucha brewery tour that made me question everything about air quality

I went to this small kombucha place in Austin last Saturday, the one off Burnet Road. The owner was showing me their fermentation room and I noticed this weird musty smell near the back vats. He said they've been fighting mold issues for 6 months because the HVAC vents are placed wrong. They lost like 30 gallons of batch last month from contamination. I was standing there thinking, how do you even fix that without ripping out the whole ceiling? He said they tried those cheap dehumidifiers but it just pushed the moisture around. I told him about my setup at home with a little window fan and he laughed but it works for my 5 gallon jars. Has anyone else dealt with weird air problems in their fermenting space?

3 comments

3 Comments

lunaf6719d ago

Wait, did you see that article in Mother Jones a few months back about commercial HVAC and mold in breweries? I remember them talking about how the airflow patterns in those big rooms are totally different from home setups. In my experience, the humidity just hangs around the edges where the vats are, especially if the vents are up high. The cheap dehumidifiers thing is a classic mistake, your mileage may vary but they really don't pull enough moisture for a space that big. You might suggest the owner look into a dedicated dehumidistat controller for the whole room, I heard that works better than portable units for keeping things even.

casey68219d ago

Is it really that serious though, breweries have been around forever without fancy controllers.

leodavis19d ago

Mold in a brewery is really that big of a deal though?