Crawford Co. Designs Industry Leading Brewery Equipment for Crawford Brew Works

From steam heated mash tuns and brew kettles, to hot liquor tanks and fermenters, Crawford Company is the premier provider of craft brewing equipment. In fact, the Rock Island-based company has designed, manufactured and installed their innovative systems in microbreweries across the country for nearly eight years.

“We’ve worked on Skeleton Key Brewery outside Chicago, Rusty Bull Brewing Co. in South Carolina, and just recently Broker Brewing in Pennsylvania. Those are all instances where Crawford sold the equipment and then Local 25 hands went and did all the process piping,” said Adam Isaacson, Crawford Company plumbing division manager. “Locally, we’ve done Front Street Brewery, Wake Brewery — which we also did all the piping — Green Tree Brewery and Crawford Brew Works.”

Isaacson is also one of five co-owners of the newly-opened Crawford Brew Works (CBW) on Devils Glen Road, which includes a 3,500-square-foot taproom, outdoor patio and lower-level production area. The microbrewery connects to next door neighbor Healthy Habits Bike Shop to provide a unique “bike and brew” experience for patrons.

“It’s interesting because every brewery is different,” Isaacson said. “A lot of breweries are put into existing buildings. For example, Wake had a very specific space and Local 25 employees had to work within those guidelines to make the equipment fit. But Green Tree and CBW were built from the ground up with a brewery in mind.”

In addition to installing the building’s regular plumbing, like waste water and gas piping, Local 25 members also installed all the process piping for the brewery equipment, which includes steam, boiler, chiller and glycol piping.

“There’s a tremendous amount of piping at work here,” Isaacson said. Brewing technology that’s new to the Quad Cities area is also being utilized at CBW. The basement currently houses four shiny seven-barrel serving vessels with a glycol jacketing cooling system designed by Crawford Company. The vessels act as a giant refrigerated keg, and can store up to 14 kegs of finished beer product at a time.

“There’s a saying that brewing beer is 5 percent brewing beer and 95 percent cleaning. So now instead of cleaning and changing 14 individual kegs, it’s one process,” Isaacson said.

Crawford also designed and installed an automatic keg washer, making cleanup faster and easier. Now, the staff at CBW has more time to create and serve their handcrafted brews to thirsty Quad Citizens.