We've Expanded Our Brewery & Craft-Beverage Glycol Chiller Service

We are expanding our glycol chiller service line for Portland breweries, taprooms, wineries, distilleries, and extraction operations, with dedicated scheduling, expanded parts stocking for chiller components, and the ability to pair chiller maintenance with CO2 and beer gas delivery on a single account.

This is not a new capability for us. We have serviced glycol systems for Portland craft-beverage producers for years. What is changing is capacity and structure: more scheduled maintenance slots, a deeper stock of pumps, controls, and fittings, and a service model built around production calendars rather than restaurant hours.

Why We Are Doing This Now

The Central Eastside and the Pearl hold the densest concentration of breweries and taprooms in the city, and our shop at 1355 NW Everett St is minutes from both. We were already there. What we kept running into was a gap: plenty of companies will sell a brewery a chiller, and plenty will fix a refrigeration system, but far fewer treat a glycol loop as its own discipline with its own maintenance requirements.

That gap shows up in the calls we take. A cellar where the tanks nearest the chiller hold setpoint and the far ones drift. Glycol that has not been tested in four years and has quietly lost its inhibitor package. Insulation stripped off a line run during a remodel and never replaced, sweating onto the floor all summer.

None of those are dramatic failures. They are slow efficiency losses that eventually become a fermentation problem at exactly the wrong moment.

What the Expanded Service Covers

Scheduled maintenance visits now include the full loop rather than just the chiller:

• Glycol concentration testing with a refractometer, plus pH and visual condition assessment, so fluid gets replaced on evidence rather than on a hunch
• Fluid replacement when testing says it is time, including proper disposal
• Pump and pressure verification across the loop, with flow balance checked at the far end where problems show first
• Line insulation inspection and repair on runs that have been damaged or stripped during remodels
• Chiller refrigeration service, which is the part that overlaps with everything else we do: condenser cleaning, charge verification, controls, contactors
• Tank-level control checks, because a fermenter that will not hold setpoint is sometimes a solenoid on that tank rather than anything upstream

Scheduling Around Production, Not Around Us

The practical constraint in a brewery is that you cannot take the loop down whenever it suits the service company. Brew days, transfers, and packaging runs dictate when a chiller can come offline.

So maintenance visits get booked against your calendar. Work that requires taking the loop down gets scheduled into a window you pick. Urgent faults during active fermentation go to the emergency line, same as any other 24/7 dispatch we run.

One truck instead of two

If you already hold a gas account with us for CO2, nitrogen, or 75/25 beer gas blends, chiller service can be coordinated with a delivery stop. In the Central Eastside, where loading zones fill up during service, that is a genuinely useful thing.

Planning Capacity Before You Buy Tanks

The other piece we want to be more deliberate about is growth planning. Adding fermenters adds load, and crash-cooling adds a lot of it in a short window. Whether your existing chiller can carry two more tanks is a question with an actual answer, and it is much cheaper to get that answer before the tanks are on a truck.

Tell us what you are adding and how you crash, and we will assess capacity against your current load.

Running a glycol system in Portland? Get in touch about scheduled maintenance, or read more about our glycol chiller service and how it pairs with commercial gas delivery.