Industry · Breweries & Distilleries
Both sides of the brewhouse wall.
Austin has more than eighty breweries, distilleries, cideries and meaderies inside a fifty-mile radius, and nearly all of them run totes somewhere in the building. We deliver into a dozen of them on a standing schedule.
The short answer
Breweries use totes on both sides of the process: food-grade units for anything touching product (cold brew, cider, blending, molasses) and industrial Grade B units for caustic, PAA, glycol and spent-grain slurry. Keep the two fleets visually separated — colored cage tags are the cheapest insurance you will ever buy.
From the yard
Cut, deburred, edge-capped
Open-top conversion
F-grade or rebottled
Product-contact grade
B-grade industrial
Chemical fleet grade
Weekly routes, Austin metro
Standing delivery
The pattern is consistent: a couple of documented food-grade totes for product-contact work, and a larger rotating fleet of cheap industrial units for chemicals, waste and grain. Buying the same grade for both jobs is how you end up paying food-grade prices to store caustic.
Applications
What breweries & distilleries actually does with them
Specific uses, with the details that decide whether a tote works well or badly for each one.
Spent grain & trub handling
A 275-gallon tote with the top cut open holds roughly 2,000 lb of wet spent grain — one batch from a 15 bbl system. Forklift it straight onto the farmer's trailer. We cut, deburr and reinforce open-top totes to order.
Cold brew & RTD blending
Cold brew coffee producers batch in food-grade totes because the vessel is cheap enough to dedicate per SKU. Ask for F-grade with a butterfly valve and a 6" screw lid for cleaning access.
Caustic, acid & PAA storage
Bulk CIP chemistry in totes cuts your per-gallon cost roughly in half versus drums. Use dedicated, placarded industrial-grade totes with chemically-compatible EPDM or Viton seals, and never rotate them back to product duty.
Glycol reservoirs & coolant
Propylene glycol systems need a make-up reservoir. A B-grade tote on a mezzanine is the standard low-budget answer, and the sight-strip on the bottle means you can read the level from the floor.
Barrel-proof blending & proofing water
Distilleries proof down with RO water held in dedicated food-grade totes. Because the product is high-proof spirit, confirm your bottle is HDPE and not a lower-grade copolymer — everything we sell as F-grade is HDPE.
Recommended
What we'd put on the quote
Starting points. Tell us the specifics and we'll adjust.
- Food Grade Totes
For anything that will touch beer, cider or spirit.
- Custom Fabrication
Open-top grain totes, cut and finished safely.
- Tote Management
We collect, wash and return your fleet on a cycle.
Compliance
What the rules expect
- TTB does not certify containers, but your process authority will want documented food-contact materials.
- Caustic and acid totes must be labeled per OSHA HazCom 29 CFR 1910.1200 — including secondary containers.
- Never stack a full tote on an open-top tote. The open unit has lost its structural top frame.
Specification
Typical spec sheet
What a breweries & distilleries order usually looks like when it leaves the yard.
| Attribute | Typical specification |
|---|---|
| Open-top conversion | Cut, deburred, edge-capped |
| Product-contact grade | F-grade or rebottled |
| Chemical fleet grade | B-grade industrial |
| Standing delivery | Weekly routes, Austin metro |
Where the money goes wrong in this sector
The two failure modes are always the same: paying for documentation you do not need, or assuming documentation exists when it does not. In breweries & distilleries, breweries use totes on both sides of the process: food-grade units for anything touching product (cold brew, cider, blending, molasses) and industrial grade b units for caustic, paa, glycol and spent-grain slurry — that sentence is the whole shortcut.
If you are unsure which side of that line your application sits on, describe it in the form. We will tell you the cheaper option when the cheaper option is genuinely adequate, because the alternative — selling you the expensive one every time — is a business model that only works once per customer.
Breweries & Distilleries questions
+Can you cut the tops off totes for spent grain?
+Do you deliver on a standing schedule?
+What do you pay for our empty chemical totes?
Other sectors
Not quite your industry?
- Agriculture & RanchingWater where the windmill isn't.
- Food & BeverageDocumented contents or it isn't food grade.
- Construction & ConcreteCheap enough to be consumable, tough enough not to be.
- Oil, Gas & EnergyThe most tote-intensive industry in the state.
- Municipal & WaterBid-friendly stock, incident-free totes.
- Landscaping & NurseriesThe tote that becomes the planter.
Quick reference
Numbers worth having open in another tab
The figures that come up in almost every conversation, whichever page you arrived on.
275 gallon · 1040 L
48×40×46
- Tare
- 130 lb
- Gross, water
- 2,425 lb
- Stack full
- 2 high
- Stock
- Always in stock
330 gallon · 1250 L
48×40×53
- Tare
- 160 lb
- Gross, water
- 2,915 lb
- Stack full
- 2 high
- Stock
- Always in stock
264 gallon · 1000 L
48×40×46
- Tare
- 125 lb
- Gross, water
- 2,325 lb
- Stack full
- 2 high
- Stock
- Usually in stock
350 gallon · 1325 L
48×40×56
- Tare
- 175 lb
- Gross, water
- 3,095 lb
- Stack full
- 2 high
- Stock
- Order in
From the yard notes
Longer reading on this
32 articles written by the people who wash, grade, weld and dispatch. No marketing copy in any of them.
- Compliance · September 21, 2021 · 3 minReading the UN Plate on Your Cage31HA1/Y/0426/USA/M1234. Five fields, each of which tells you something you probably need.
- Buying · July 25, 2023 · 3 minBuying Used Containers Without Getting Burned: Four QuestionsFour questions, asked by email, before any money moves. The quality of the answers tells you more than the price does.
- Buying · January 19, 2022 · 4 minGrade A Is Not Food Grade, and the Difference Costs Real MoneyThe most abused phrase in the used-container business, and the three things that have to be true before anyone should use it.
On the yard this week
More answers
While you're here
Pulled from the full FAQ, which runs to forty-plus answers across buying, grades, food safety, sizes, selling, compliance, delivery and care.
- Where we are
- 3505 Montopolis Dr, Austin, TX 78744
- Yard hours
- Mon–Thu 7:30a–5p · Fri 7:30a–4p · Sat 8a–12p · Sun closed (Central Time)
- Coverage
- 68 Texas counties on scheduled routes, from one Austin yard.
+What are standard IBC tote dimensions?
+How do I tell if a used tote is sound?
+Can I inspect before buying?
+How much does a used IBC tote cost?
+Can I bury a tote?
Send a breweries & distilleries request.
Application, volume and destination. You'll have a written price, a grade recommendation and a delivery date the same business day.