BRC advice for brewing beer and making wine
Good day,
We're a winery with BRC certification for food safety, our scope is the production and bottling of red, white and rosé wines, MCC and liqueur and contract bottling and labelling. There is a possibility of brewing beer in our facility. If you any of you could be so kind as to give some advice pertaining to the following questions:
1. What implications would this move have on our BRC certification.
2. How would this affect our BRC procedures.
3. Could the brewing of beer in our wine cellar negatively affect our wines?
Thank you so much! Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
My views are as follows..
1 - You either put the process in your BRC scope or leave it out. If you leave it out then you would ideally be brewing in a different area of your facility as some auditors prefer to see a clear line both figuratively and literally with products in scope and products out of scope. If you were going to sell the beer to any reasonably sized retailer then they would likely insist that it is in scope.
2 - If you had it in your BRC scope then you would need to be compliant with BRC for production of beer. So you would need HACCP, traceability, supplier approval etc.. They could be the same document as for wine or they could need rewriting.
3 - Difficult to answer without seeing your facility but you would need to be aware of things like taints, cross contamination, allergen management. Also a likely increase in pest activity if you are going to be storing hops and grain.
Hope that gives you a few pointers
Neil
I think Neil has answered most of your queries.
On point 3, the best Is to do a risk assessment of the process and determine the risks assosiated with this new process, especially microbiological and allergen risks. Sanitation of your filling equipment, if you are going to use your current filling line and cellar equipment (pipes, tanks, etc) used in the beer making process.
I know Cederberg Private Cellar is also brewing beer on small scale, maybe you can contact them and find out how they handle their winemaking and beer making process in the winery.
All the best with this new adventure!
Wine Gum
Hi Deirdre,
BRC, is a tool that verifies your product safety mainly.
This is supported by your company establishment, documentation, process, equipments, workers etc...