The Hazards Nobody Warns You About

When you picture running a brewery, you imagine pulling pints and chatting to customers. You don't imagine the chemical burn from a caustic wash that splashed because you were rushing. Here's a partial list of what you're actually working with:

Heat. You're boiling hundreds of litres of liquid in vessels that reach 100°C and above. Steam burns are common. Touch the wrong pipe at the wrong time and you'll know about it for weeks. Hot liquor tanks, boil kettles, heat exchangers — they're all capable of causing serious burns.

Chemicals. Brewing requires aggressive cleaning chemicals — caustic soda, peracetic acid, phosphoric acid. These are not household cleaners. Caustic soda will dissolve skin on contact. Peracetic acid will damage your lungs if you breathe it in. Mix the wrong chemicals together and you can create toxic gases. Proper storage, handling procedures, PPE, and COSHH assessments are not optional extras — they're legal requirements.

Heavy lifting. 25kg sacks of malt, full casks weighing 70kg or more, kegs, gas cylinders, pallets of cans. This is manual handling at its most punishing. Back injuries are endemic in the industry. Without proper training and equipment — pallet trucks, keg lifts, trolleys — someone will get hurt. It's a matter of when, not if.

Barley dust. This is the one that catches people completely off guard. Milling grain creates fine dust that gets everywhere. Inhale enough of it over time and you're looking at occupational asthma, respiratory sensitisation, and chronic lung problems. Grain dust is a recognised occupational hazard with specific exposure limits. You need extraction, ventilation, and dust masks — and most small breweries don't have adequate provision for any of them.

Electricity and water. Breweries are wet environments full of electrical equipment. Pumps, heating elements, control panels, refrigeration units — all operating in close proximity to water and washdowns. The risk of electrocution is real, and your electrical installations need to be properly rated for a wet industrial environment, not just wired up by a mate who's handy.

CO2 and confined spaces. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide. In an enclosed or poorly ventilated space, CO2 displaces oxygen. People have died walking into fermentation rooms where CO2 has accumulated at floor level. You can't see it, you can't smell it, and by the time you feel dizzy it may be too late. CO2 monitoring and adequate ventilation are essential.

Slips, trips, and falls. Wet floors, hoses across walkways, spilled grain, uneven surfaces. It sounds mundane compared to chemical burns and CO2 asphyxiation, but slips and falls account for a huge proportion of workplace injuries. In a busy brewery, the floor is almost always wet.