Falls from heights are one of the most dangerous and serious types of workplace injuries. Falls from heights are also one of the most common and potentially preventable types of workplace injuries. Slip, trip and falls are the 2nd most common accident in general after motor vehicle accidents. There can be multiple fall hazards in breweries ranging from climbing ladders to accessing the top of tanks. Care must be given to ensure employees are protected from falls by the use of fall protection or prevention, and proper safety training.
In general, fall protection should complete one of the following 2 functions: 1) Prevent or restrain a worker from falling (i.e., Fall Prevention). 2) Stop or arrest a worker who falls (i.e., Fall Protection). To learn more on steps your brewery can take to help prevent falls in the workplace, please download the Master Brewers Association of the Americas (MBAA) provided Safety Document below. Slip & Fall Protection (MBAA)
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The Brewers Association (BA) has released a new resource developed by the safety subcommittee. Best Management Practice for Surviving an OSHA Inspection provides helpful information for understanding the process of an on-site inspection by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), or an OSHA-Approved State Plan.
The guidelines are designed to lead breweries toward developing a safety program and standard operating procedures (SOPs) that ensure a healthy and safe work environment. The document outlines the role of the brewery representative, a brewery’s rights and responsibilities and includes FAQs related to OSHA regulations and inspections. “The most basic responsibility of any employer is to provide a workplace free from serious recognized hazards and comply with the standards, rules and regulations issued under the OSH Act,” adds Matt Stinchfield, the BA’s Safety Ambassador. “Preparing for an OSHA inspection will also elevate your brewery to a higher level of safety awareness and improve worker wellbeing.” The BA’s safety subcommittee developed this resource in direct response to the concerns of member breweries large and small. - via Brewers Association Jeff Carlson of Harmon Brewing Co. (Photo courtesy Jeff Carlson) Re-Blogged from All About Beer Magazine Written by Bryan Roth on 1/8/16 Last March, Jeff Carlson was preparing for another busy day at Harmon Brewing Co. The head brewer had two batches of his Expedition Amber to brew, along with other odds and ends around the brewery in Tacoma, Washington. As he prepared to drain a mash tun, he cracked open its bottom drain and main manway to begin the flow of hot wort out of the 10-barrel-sized container. Something quickly went wrong, however, as pressure from a couple of extra inches of water on top of the grain forced the manway open. Malt and 175-degree water splashed onto him. The mixture went right down his front side, spilling into his right boot, where a tucked-in pant leg kept the water and grains in place. When he backed away into the middle of the brewery, the boot was sealed to his leg—his tucked-in pants causing suction with the wort. He tore off the boot, dropped his pants and looked down at his bright, red skin as he hosed it off with cool water. “There was a bunch of white stuff on my foot I kept trying to brush off,” Carlson says. “I couldn’t figure out what it was when it dawned on me. It’s my skin rolling off my foot.” Surgery would soon graft 20 inches of pig skin along his shin and foot, and Carlson would miss five weeks of work. “I’ve worked in the industry for over seven years, and you’ll hear about ‘don’t do this or that,’ but you don’t always think about the consequences,” says Carlson, who continues to receive treatment for second- and third-degree burns. The perception of working in the beer industry may be one of men and women clinking pint glasses and having a good time at festivals or in brewhouses, but just like any other industrial business, risk is involved. Which is why there’s a growing chorus of voices trying to educate brewers and staff who have been placing more importance on personal safety needs. It comes at an ideal time, as brewery injuries reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) have been on the rise the last four years of reported data, increasing from 160 in 2011 to 530 in 2014. Sprains/strains, chemical burns/corrosions and bruises/contusions were the most common injuries, accounting for half of cases reported to BLS in 2014. Increasingly, less experienced staff are most injured—the number of injuries reported to the BLS for employees with less than a year of service in the industry went from 40 in 2013 to 200 in 2014. Staff with more than five years of experience still managed 150 reported cases in 2014. About half of injuries in 2014 kept employees out of work for 10 days or more. The beer community isn’t averse to the worst outcome from accidents as well: Three deaths were reported in 2009 and one in 2012. “The bigger this industry becomes, the more eyes will be watching us,” says Michael Francis, owner and brewer at Payette Brewing Co. in Boise, Idaho. “For a long time, beer has stayed in this ‘hey, this is a cool job’ mentality, but now it’s turning into an industry that is about a lot more than just making beer.” Francis is focused on the idea of safety these days, as his brewery prepares for an expansion in space and staffing. Payette has grown from four to 24 employees over the past three years, prompting him to start work on a safety manual that will be shared with everyone who works at the brewery. He notes he finds himself more sensitive to potential issues these days, including how the industry may react to increased scrutiny from the government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. An employee at Payette Brewing Co. missed two weeks of work after falling from a ladder. (Photo courtesy Payette Brewing Co.) Earlier this year, Francis had a cellarman miss two weeks of work after a fall from a ladder, which he says meant increased work for himself and others to pick up the slack. “For years we would run up and down ladders without thinking about it, but if you take a step back and think about it, that’s a really big deal,” he says. “Something like putting on a safety harness doesn’t seem so minor now.” The Brewers Association recently began an effort to put more emphasis on safety with the hiring in April of Matt Stinchfield as safety ambassador for the trade organization. Stinchfield, who founded Ploughshare Brewing Co. in Lincoln, Nebraska, has spent more than 30 years consulting on safety, with almost 20 of them focusing on breweries. Stinchfield travels the country to meet with brewers and state brewers guilds to offer insight and expertise on making breweries and warehouses safer. He’s also working with colleagues to roll out 70 online videos to cover all facets of safety, from chemical use to lifting techniques. Conversations around safety already exist, Stinchfield says, but it’s his job to make them happen more often. “Brewers are talking about the hazards they’ve encountered and near misses because really, we’re like a bunch of guys sitting at the rural corner store comparing notes,” he says. Which rings true for Gabriel Magliaro, founder of Chicago’s Half Acre Beer Co. Looking back on the early days of his brewery, which opened in 2007, he can rattle off a list of decisions he and co-workers might think twice about today: slinging 165-pound kegs without stretching or worrying about body movement, dropping equipment near feet without steel-toed boots or getting a slight burn as they walked by vessels with heated water inside. “They’re natural hazards as part of the job, but it’s also not necessarily stuff you should have to worry about, because you can guard against them,” he says. It’s a lesson he learned earlier this year while visiting Half Acre’s new production brewery, also in Chicago. “I was rinsing out a blow-off arm on a tank, and it was packed with peracetic acid solution and water,” Magliaro recalls. “The pressure release valve pushed out and chemicals blasted me in the face, but thankfully I was wearing safety glasses.” The incident gave Magliaro an excuse to test out a newly installed eye-washing station. The brewery also has emergency showers. “I hosed myself down and I was fine,” he says. “Things happen even when you’re familiar with the process." Gabriel Magliaro, founder of Half Acre Beer Co. (Photo courtesy BrewBokeh)
For Harmon Brewing’s Jeff Carlson, work in the months since his accident meant getting used to new safety measures, from being more aware of how he uses equipment to the way he dresses—pants are always outside boots now to prevent water sticking inside. These are steps he believes are inevitable to become commonplace among his peers across the country. “Unless you’ve seen something happen or heard about it, the idea of safety can be hard to hit home,” he says. “But it will get better as more people talk about it and the consequences that can come from making a mistake.” Bryan Roth is a North Carolina-based writer. Find him tweeting about beer at @bryandroth. Aerial view of Flat Creek Estate, Texas. (Photo Courtesy Arch Aerial.)
Re-Blogged from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation Written by Michael Hendrix on 1/19/16 Drones are a buzzy topic. For winemakers, they are serious business. At a recent panel I moderated at the Texas Wine Symposium, a room full of down-to-earth farmers became animated with the notion of drones as mobile platforms for precision agriculture. And who could blame them? While the Texas High Plains outside of Lubbock and Austin’s Hill Country seem far from Silicon Valley, their high-margin wine growers are hungry for an edge in a fast-growing market. Chris Brundrett, co-founder of William Chris Wines, recently used a drone to film promotional videos of his estate. His partner in the effort was Ryan Baker, the youthful CEO of Arch Aerial, a drone maker. As the camera zoomed in for a scene, he instantly saw the tell-tale signs of a plant disease common to vineyards. Not that Brundrett was surprised. “Of course I knew that,” he said with a smirk. But his casual demeanor changed to youthful exuberance when conversation shifted to detecting photosynthetic activity in his grape leaves or scaring away pests or dusting his crop. The ideas were practically endless — and endlessly practical. We’re talking information he never had before that’s actually useful, he said. A grizzled older man in the back of the room raised his hand, asking if he could use a drone to measure temperature across altitude and distance. Sure you could, said Baker, but no one’s doing it. Fine, I’ll build it, said the man. And so he will. Winemakers who had never laid eyes on a drone instantly saw its potential. Our panel had hardly finished our own conversation before the crowd wanted in to pepper us with detailed, practical questions. How much do they weigh? Would I need a fixed-wing or an octo-rotor craft? Can I connect them to my robots? (Yes, this winemaker employed robots, and yes he was asking about creating his own Internet of Things, just not in so many words.) Drones carry the promise of precision agriculture. Conventional photography and near-infrared imagery produces reams of data over areas large and small that advanced software tools then stitch together into 3D models. But that is simply the beginning. Drones carry the promise of precision agriculture. Conventional photography and near-infrared imagery produces reams of data over areas large and small that advanced software tools then stitch together into 3D models. But that is simply the beginning. The coming years will see numerous being made for drones; I won’t list them, only to say that they are simply limited by your imagination and the federal government (more on that shortly). What we are seeing is a revolution in the capability and cost of unmanned aerial vehicles as well as the veracity of data that they’re gathering. Drones are at the forefront of a revolution in aviation thanks to growing computer power and cheaper sensors paired with automation. In short, drones allow vineyards to know whether their vines are behaving as they should. How are their crop progressing? What issues must be addressed? This bird’s-eye view promises a more precise and proactive viniculture. And yet policy often complicates things. The most important player in the drone industry is not a company, but the government. The FAA expects to finalize rules for commercial drones this spring. Meanwhile, the FAA is offering exemptions to allow certain drone users to, among other activities, conduct aerial photography. But final rules are still up in the air. Personally, I came to the symposium with no clear idea what to expect. I only had strong sense that there was a potential with young and hungry winemakers to try something new, and what better place to try than in Texas? At the very least their would be a crowd there crazy enough to give drones a try (I can say that as a Texan myself). I left the room with the knowledge that we had sparked something—or perhaps more accurately, we had simply added fuel to the fire In the coming years, watchers of the commercial drone market should keep an eye on two fields: agriculture and mining. For the latter, China’s deceleration will lead to cutbacks in surveying expenditures; LIDAR will be on the outs, drones will be in. In agriculture, farmers with large fields or high margin crops will likely be the main drivers in drone use. Drones have long been under the gaze of the public eye, and the public likes what they see. More than that, there’s value to drones as mobile platforms deployed for all manner of businesses, including vineyards. I believe drones could be the next big thing in agriculture. Safe and responsible commercial drone use is in everyone’s interest -- starting right now. The FAA’s rules were supposed to be in place by September of last year. Instead we are left waiting. Whatever regulations are finally put in place, they must be finalized efficiently and clearly, ultimately leaving ample room for unpredictable innovation. Especially when the results taste so good. We hope you, your family, and friends have a happy holiday season filled with joy and meaning! As the year ends, we think about all the things for which we are grateful. Our relationship with local wineries, breweries, & distilleries is one thing we treasure. Best wishes for a prosperous new year! Please let us know how we can be of service to you or your organization in the coming year. Our holiday hours are: Dec. 24th (CLOSED) Dec. 25th (CLOSED) Jan. 1st (CLOSED) Reblogged from TheBrewerMagazine.com (written by Jon Sicotte)
Kerry Thomas, the head brewer at Edge Brewing in Boise, Idaho, probably went to work on July 10 with the usual amount of care that any brewer has when it comes to safety — be watchful, be careful and follow the rules like she had every brew day. But during that brewing session of a Double IPA named Obligatory, the 15-barrel brew kettle got to boil, hops were added and a boil-over started. Thomas turned, just a second from her favorite beer to make sure everyone else was out of range and was greeted with a wave of boiling wort as she turned back around. She jumped from the brewstand as fellow employees doused her with cold water. But, the damage was done. Thomas, who received seven skin grafts about a week later after being rushed to the Burn Center at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City, had second and third degree burns to 30 percent of her body, including her right arm, shoulder and parts of her torso. Her husband, Cory, said through their GoFundMe account that only 66 percent of burn victims with that amount of damage live. “I’m glad we didn’t know this statistic until today,” he wrote on August 4. Steve Koonce, the Director of Sales and Marketing at Edge, said that Thomas has a long road ahead of her, but she is key in the success of the 1,200 bbl. brewery. He hopes by sometime in September that she can return to the brewery, if not to work, at least to share a smile and maybe some brewing knowledge. “It will be important to have her back, but it’s going to be up to her and her husband Cory to be 100 percent that she can take care of herself. That’s first,” he said. “She really wants to come back and all we have talked about is brewery operation when we talk. “We have some important dates coming up and she is invested in the company. At the same time she knows the most important thing is that she gets better.” For Koonce, he said he’s seen his share of accidents that require a trip to the emergency room. Burns, breaks and scrapes happen, of course, but it’s reducing the chance of those daily that’s what owners and managers strive for. For Edge, Koonce said the nearly two-year-old brewery has already begun the process of purchasing a sensor for the kettle that indicates a boil over with a killswitch. A cold-water shower is going to be built closer to the brewstand, even closer than the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard. “We are going to look into a lot of stuff to make sure that something like this could never happen again,” he said. “I can say with a level of confidence that this will not happen again.” Although OHSA did have to get involved with Edge Brewing, it’s a rare occurrence throughout the United States. In a public record search of OSHA’s database, in the past five years only six major accidents have occurred in a brewery setting, with just one leading to death. That happened after a Boston Beer Co. employee was struck by a forklift and died after complications during surgery. The other instances led to either burns, cuts or fractures. In a separate search, only eight breweries in the country have been cited for violations by OSHA since January 1, 2014 with 54 total serious level violations. Thomas’ story is rare, but major accidents can happen in an industrial setting like a brewhouse. Minimizing risk of injury to not just employees, but patrons as well is key. Fred Maier, the owner and vice president of Pittston, Pennsylvania-based Susquehanna Brewing says along with keeping patrons safe, keeping his employees safe through the brewing process is just as key. “We put steel-mesh grates over anything hot,” he said, noting heat exchangers. “We cover things up where you could really burn yourself. You can feel the heat radiating off of it. God forbid someone just brushed against it.” Susquehanna has been listed as a top 10 place to take a brewery tour in a list published online by USA Today. Maier said the 10,000 bbl. brewhouse that has been open for three years is very adamant when it comes to warning the public during the tour that action is happening all around them. “If it’s shiny it could be hot. Don’t touch anything, use common sense,” said Maier, who runs an hour-long tour on Saturdays. “Our brewhouse is on a raised floor that is painted caution yellow. It’s constantly reminding people to please watch their step.” The hardest functions can be outside the realm of tours when dealing with the public. Fundraisers or other private events bring in, sometimes, a different clientele. “There is one thing when you go on a brewery tour, you kind of know what to expect. It’s another thing when someone comes to a function, a mixer, they don’t think of it being in an industrial space,” Maier said. “We have done a good job of covering up things and making sure floor drains and things like that are in place. “They are simple precautionary and they cost a little money upfront but it takes a lot of danger of people walking around off the floor.” Maier said that Susquehanna has ‘a pretty healthy’ insurance umbrella policy. “We consider the brewery our number one salesman so we … wanted to move thousands of people through it over the course of a year. So it was built into the insurance to keep ourselves out of a jam.” Although they do not have a set policy, Maier said that Susquehanna rarely sees parents bringing children to the tours, but they don’t turn them away. They just make sure to tell parents to keep an eye on precocious children. “I have kids, so I know what it’s like,” he said. “You have to remember it’s a working brewery but that is few and far between [where parents bring kids]. If it happens once or twice a year that is a lot.” Although Koonce said Edge Brewing will have to pay more in insurance premiums because of the accident to Thomas, it doesn’t hurt the brewery too much moving forward. After a solid first year and many upgrades to increase capacity to about double its 2014 output, Koonce said it will hurt Edge’s bottom line for a while, but it will recover. And it will do so with even more safety measures in mind. “We don’t take workplace safety lightly anyway from the brewers to the restaurant staff,” he said. “We are going make sure the brewers know what can happen … when they are trained they are going to watch the boil. Don’t try to do more than that at once. “If we have to do something to be safer, we are going to do it. We can’t have something happen again where we lose someone like Kerry who is so important to our business. She makes the beer! She’s the one that had made all of it up to this point. We aren’t going to mess around after this particular accident and we don’t want it to happen again.” You have a lot of responsibilities running a brewery and have to wear many different hats. Sometimes, keeping safety in mind and reducing risk to the brewery and its employees can go by the wayside. To help, our brewery insurance specialists here at Regnier Insurance put together a free Safety Resources & Best Practices Powerpoint for Breweries which you can download for FREE below (Click Here to Download). ![]()
For the easiest, quickest, & most enjoyable insurance quote you've ever experienced, click below: Congratulations to all the Texas Breweries who won a medal at the 2015 Great American Beer Fest. Texas also set a new record for themselves with 9 Gold Medal Winners, up from 6 in 2014. See the full list of winners by Clicking Here.
Source: Texas Hill Country Wineries
The winners of the 2015 Lone Star International Wine Competition (the 32nd year of the competition) have been announced. It is the oldest wine competition in Texas. Over 500 wines were submitted to the 2015 Lone Star International Wine Competition. Texas Wine Lover has posted all the Texas winery winners over on his website. Congrats to all the well deserving Texas wineries who won!
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