Harpoon expands Boston brewery

(Peter Howe, NECN) - It was a special delivery for Harpoon Brewing in South Boston, Massachusetts: Two gigantic new beer fermenting tanks, each 38 feet tall, made in Missouri, and trucked here. Al Marzi has a great job title at Harpoon: Chief Brewing Officer (and vice president). He said the beer industry is holding up pretty well in the current economic conditions - not recession proof, but good beer remains a little daily luxury people enjoy. Demand isn't growing this year as fast as it did last year or the year before, but Marzi said Harpoon remains "bullish on the craft beer market.'' Howe: Now in case you are wondering how much beer is in each one of those tanks, I ran some numbers. Each tank contains 500 31-gallon barrels, and if you tried to drink that at the rate of one beer a day, it would take you almost 453 years to drain just one of the tanks. Placing the stainless steel tanks was the job for Shaughnessy Crane. Each one is 28,000 pounds, empty. Wielding a tape measure, Marzi and the crew positioned them down to the inch. The new tanks increase Harpoon's Boston capacity by 40 percent, but more important, Marzi said, is to give them flexibility to use smaller tanks inside the complex to mix up smaller batches of more exotic or adventurous beer. Typically ale ferments and conditions for about two weeks inside each tank before it is bottled or put in kegs.