From cows to hops: Homegrown manufacturer bridges the gap between dairies and breweries
From cows to hops: Homegrown manufacturer bridges the gap between dairies and breweries
Ultimate Brew Service fashioned dairy tanks into brewing vessels. Now, it builds entire brewhouses. The local company is a one-stop shop for breweries.
Chris Brogan remembers those nights he would get woken up by the buzz of his phone. Often, it was a farmer asking him to hurry off to the farm to repair some dairy equipment. Now that he has his own business, those calls don’t come any more.
Brogan moved from cows to hops when he started Ultimate Brew Service in 2018. Using his dairy experience as a guide, he fashioned his business as a one-stop shop for breweries. Chemicals, fabrications, components, parts, whatever, UBS does it all.
“It’s definitely a blessing to have a good craft beer at the end of my work day, instead of getting pooped or peed on all day and then go home smelling like a farm,” Brogan said. “Making that change has been amazing. I was on call for dairy farms. There would be times when I would get called out to Buffalo at three in the morning and then I would have to work the next day.
“When I started this business and started doing after-hours service calls, I got a call from a brewer on a Saturday and his chiller was down. He asked me politely if I could get there by Monday morning. I kinda shook my head, ‘Wow.’ I am so used to, ‘Are you on your way yet? Are you in the truck? It’s a lot of money lost every hour I can’t milk my cows.’ Brewers, for the most part, they’re not working the holidays, they’re not working late.”
It’s a different world for Brogan now. And through a partnership with his childhood friend Justin O’Donoghue, they’ve built UBS into an essential partner for upstate breweries. Have a problem and need it fixed quickly, then UBS is your solution. In just five years, UBS has grown to become a vital part of the craft beverage industry.
“The people we work with, that makes it fun,” O’Donoghue said.
“This industry just has a community feeling,” Brogan added. “It’s a job we can come to every day and feel passionate about and don’t get exhausted from it really.”
Photo: UBS president Chris Brogan, left, and vice president Justin O’Donoghue inside the company’s new warehouse/production space in the city of Rochester.
When asked which local breweries they’ve worked with at this point, O’Donoghue replied, “There are very few that we haven’t worked with.”
“Not all, but most, 90 percent, I’d say,” Brogan added.
No, this isn’t a paid testimonial
While at Roc Brewing, Nick Mesrobian, the former head brewer there, estimated he called on UBS at least once every two weeks. Roc had a UBS-produced lagering tank, Brite tank, and parts of its combo vessel (mash/lauter tun and hot liquor tank).
“Andy (Cook from Swiftwater Brewing) told me about them and they were like Snap-on for brewery parts, pulling around a trailer full of parts, and now they build brewhouses,” said Mesrobian, detailing UBS’ unlikely trajectory.
When asked to describe UBS’ success, Mesrobian offered, “They’re good at a lot of things, not just one.” Whether it be Brogan’s ability to weld well or selling the chemicals needed for the brewing process (for cleaning, sanitation, whatever), UBS can pretty much handle it all and they do it all in this region, Mesrobian said.
“It’s a good mix of people that brings a lot to the table,” Mesrobian added. “First of all, they’re now in Rochester. That’s awesome. You can pretty much get whatever part you need from them. They work with you and they will customize absolutely anything you want.
Photo: Brewer Brad Nagle grains out at the new Rising Storm Brewing location in Penfield. UBS built Rising Storm’s new system.
“We go through them so much, especially for little things. I do joke that every time they leave, they break something and two weeks later I call them, ‘Heyyyy, I need you to fix this thing. I saw you walking near it two weeks ago, a little suspicious.’ He’s ‘Chris Fix-It’ in my phone. That says it all.”
Mesrobian traveled with the UBS crew to the most recent Craft Brewers Conference in Nashville and worked as a de facto salesperson. He expounded on the virtues of UBS-manufactured equipment from a brewer’s perspective.
The roots
At age 23, Brogan found himself working long, and sometimes odd, hours in the dairy industry. He would often be called at all hours of the night to troubleshoot or repair broken and malfunctioning dairy equipment and he was expected to be there quickly.
He worked for companies that developed, manufactured, and installed equipment for milk production and storage. “The only think we didn’t do was lay the concrete,” Brogan said. “That’s where I learned a lot of my skill set. I was very familiar with the chemicals needed, too.” Needless to say, it was taxing work.
Paying a visit to OSB Ciderworks in Livingston County completely changed his trajectory. Brogan asked OSB cidermaker Eric Smith where they sourced their tanks and inquired if where they obtained their parts. When Brogan was welding a tank there, he was told OSB sourced most of its parts online.
“That’s when I thought there was business to be had here,” Brogan said. “I slowly started the business at the same time as Rising Storm, Mortalis, and No BS opened up. We got our foot in the door there and they trusted us. They told other customers and we grew by word of mouth.”
Brogan launched the business in his garage and began retrofitting old dairy tanks into brewing vessels. He recruited O’Donoghue, a classmate at Avon High School, to join. “We’ve been friends for as long as I can remember,” Brogan said. “And he’s basically great at everything I’m not.” That includes website design, sales sheets, and “everything I’m trying to sell to these brewers in a presentable format,” Brogan said.
Photo: Underground Beer Lab’s new 10-barrel brewing system inside the new UBS production facility. UBL is expanding at its East Syracuse location.
From the garage, they transitioned to a 16-by-32-foot shed. They outgrew that within six months and moved operations to Lima, where they occupied about 1,000 square feet (rented from Blue Heron Logistics). And within five months, they moved into a 4,000-square-foot space.
UBS remained in Livingston County until it made the move into the city of Rochester in the last few months. The new spot is 7,400 square feet and will allow for increased storage. Just think about all of the components UBS will now be able to keep in stock. It’s quite the glow up over the past five years.
Growing organically
Brogan said his age (just 23 at the time) was the biggest initial hurdle to convincing breweries to allow them to even come in the doors. But once other brewers started talking about their products and services, that barrier was removed.
“A lot of our marketing was just doing a good job and letting our reputation build organically,” O’Donoghue said.
(I tried to profile UBS two years ago while I was still at the D&C and got turned down, because they were already incredibly busy. But they’ve added four more employees since then and can accommodate new business.)
“We can customize anything to match a brewery’s preferences,” O’Donoghue said. That includes a sour-only tank at Rising Storm or the horizontal lager tanks at Roc and Frequentem.
The UBS crew joined the New York State Brewers Association, attended its annual Albany conference, and presented its wares at national conferences. This approach allowed UBS to get in front of brewers and demonstrate the capabilities of its products.
Supplying chemicals, which includes sanitizers, cleaners, and other chemicals, to breweries is a huge part of UBS’ business. They contract with a Saratoga-based manufacturer to offer these products throughout the state.
Brogan noted that they started working along the Route 5 and 20 corridor, picking up breweries like Naked Dove, Frequentem, Prison City, and Eli Fish, before expanding down the Thruway to the Buffalo and Syracuse areas. There is still a lot of space to push into wineries, Brogan said.
O’Donoghue and Brogan said they’ve grown by attending trade shows and brewers conferences across the country. At these events, they’re able to showcase and demonstrate different products, especially the UBS Ultimate Brew Tank, a mobile vessel used for dry-hopping, flavor/adjunct infusing, and carbonating. It’s the first insulated and glycol-jacketed flavoring tank on the marker and has allowed UBS to gain customers across the country.
“It’s about newer technology,” Brogan said. “We’re trying to push the envelope on the latest and greatest technology in the brewing industry.”
“There is definitely a need for more modern flavoring techniques with the heavily hopped beers, with the heavily adjuncted beers, barrel-aged beers, purees,” O’Donoghue added. “It really handles and solves all of those issues you might have for flavoring your beer post fermentation.”
Brogan said Swiftwater Brewing founder Andy Cook played a vital role in developing the Ultimate Brew Tank. Cook was trying to remove coconut from one of his conical tanks and “it took him hours to get it out,” Brogan said. “We started to come up with a design, and Andy helped us out. We came up with a center-screen design.”
Essentially, a brewer runs the adjunct or any other ingredient through the vessel and it captures the stuff left behind before it is pushed back to the larger tank. So it allows breweries to see better flavor profiling with lower ingredient usage. It’s also easier much easier to clean and is can be moved all around a brewery (since it is on wheels). Since releasing the Ultimate Brew Tank, UBS has expanded its offerings and now constructs entire brewhouses (the first one was constructed in 2019 for Homer Hops), while also maintaining the ability to build single tanks. UBS also offers keg washers.
Really, as some of these breweries have grown, especially the ones in Livingston County, UBS has grown right up with them. As Rising Storm and K2 Brothers work on massive expansions, UBS is constructing the biggest, most advanced systems they’ve built. Rising Storm’s Daisy Flour Mill location features a 15-barrel brewhouse, while K2’s under-construction expansion in Wayne County will have a 20-barrel system. Brogan is especially proud of the 10-barrel decoction-ready system they built for Faircraft. (Expect a separate newsletter on that one soon, because it’s super cool.)
Brogan is very, very excited for the new product it hopes to debut for the next national Craft Brewers Conference — an automatic tank washer. He said bigger breweries like Genesee have access to something like this, but it’s not an option for smaller craft breweries (probably 60 barrels and lower). It would be a safer alternative as brewers wouldn’t have to handle chemicals and would provide a consistent wash.
Remember that Genny beer election? Here’s an update
Genesee urged the public to cast votes for its next season release earlier this year. And unlike the 2020 presidential election, these results won’t be questioned and contested. I received a top secret confidential letter Tuesday and it provided some clues for the outcome. Check out my video above.
Of note, the Genny brand team is absolutely brilliant and I can’t wait to see how it announces the winner of this election.