Sanitary Stainless Welding for Breweries & Food Plants
Merritt builds and installs the process piping, tanks, and sanitary stainless that Western North Carolina's breweries, distilleries, and food plants run on — back-purged, polished, passivated, and documented.
Sanitary Isn't a Buzzword. It's a Bead.
Anything that touches your product lives or dies on the inside of the weld — a pitted, sugared, or crevice-ridden bead is a harbor for the bacteria that ruin batches and fail audits. Merritt runs a stainless-only shop and welds product-contact joints one way: back-purged TIG, full penetration, smooth interior bead, finished and passivated to spec. Then we prove it, in writing.
- ✓AWS D18.1 sanitary-weld certified crew
- ✓Back-purged TIG on every product-contact joint
- ✓Borescope inspection on closed lines
- ✓Weld maps & material certs with every job
Stainless for Everything That Ferments, Flows, or Feeds
One shop for the tank farm, the transfer lines, and the kitchen behind the taproom.
What Every Product-Contact Weld Gets
Back-Purged Everything
Argon inside the pipe, not just around the torch — so the interior bead comes out bright, not sugared.
Ra-Spec Finishes
Product-contact surfaces polished to your spec and verified — smooth enough that nothing gets a foothold.
Passivation & Paperwork
Citric passivation after every install, plus weld maps, filler certs, and reports filed for your next audit.
Stainless-Only Shop
No carbon steel in our building — zero cross-contamination riding into your plant on our spools.
Lines We've Built, Cellars We've Grown
From Walkthrough to Wet Test
Built to protect the thing you actually care about: production.
Walk the Line
We measure on site, spec alloys and finishes with you, and map the tie-in points before anything gets cut.
Prefab in the Shop
Spools, manifolds, and skids are welded in our stainless-only bays — so on-site time shrinks to fitting and tie-in.
Install on Your Dark Days
Nights, weekends, or between batches — we phase the work so the tanks keep fermenting and the kitchen keeps serving.
Passivate, Document, Hand Over
Citric passivation, borescope check, weld map binder, and a wet test with your team before we call it done.
Grow the Cellar Without Losing a Brew Day
Most of our brewery work happens while the brewery is running. New fermenters land between batches, tie-ins happen on dark days, and transfer lines get rerouted overnight. It's the difference between hiring a welder and hiring a shop that has stood in a brewhouse during peak season.
- ✓Off-hours & weekend installs
- ✓Phased tie-ins around production
- ✓Prefabbed spools cut site time in half
- ✓Same crew from quote to wet test
Why Process Engineers Call Us Back
The three things clients mention when they refer us.
1A Stainless-Only Shop
No carbon steel dust anywhere near your spools. Dedicated tooling, dedicated brushes, dedicated bays — contamination can't ride in on our work.
2Paperwork That Passes Audits
Weld maps, material certs, passivation reports — organized per job and handed over at the wet test. Your next FSMA or health inspection starts pre-answered.
3Crews Who've Stood in a Brewhouse
We know a racking arm from a CIP arm and a dark day from a brew day. You won't spend your install teaching the welder how a cellar works.
Asked Before Every Project
What does "food-grade welding" actually mean?
It's a workmanship standard, not a marketing phrase: full-penetration TIG welds made with an argon back-purge, a smooth crevice-free interior bead, surfaces finished to spec, and passivation afterward — per AWS D18.1 sanitary welding practice. The goal is simple: nowhere for product or bacteria to hide.
Do you provide documentation for audits?
Yes — every job closes with a weld map, filler and material certs, and passivation records in one binder (paper and PDF). Clients use them for FSMA, health department, and co-packer audits.
What's passivation, and do I need it?
Welding disturbs stainless steel's protective chromium-oxide layer. Passivation — we use citric acid — restores it, so the steel resists corrosion the way the mill intended. On product-contact stainless, it's not optional in our shop.
Can you work while we're producing?
That's our default. We prefab as much as possible in our shop, then install on your dark days, nights, or weekends and phase tie-ins around your schedule. Most brewery clients never lose a batch to an install.
How far do you travel?
Day work stays within about an hour of Asheville — Hendersonville to Weaverville, Black Mountain to Mills River. For multi-day installs we cover Western North Carolina plus upstate South Carolina and East Tennessee.
How fast can you quote?
We'll usually walk your site within a week and have a written quote three to five business days after that. If a failed weld has production down, call — emergency sanitary repairs jump the line.
304 or 316L — which do I need?
304 handles most beer, spirits, and food duty. We spec 316L where chlorides or aggressive chemistry live — brines, citrus, some CIP regimes, and certain dairy applications. We'll confirm against your process before anything is ordered.
Can you match our existing tri-clamp setup?
Yes. We stock common tri-clamp ferrule sizes and gaskets, and we'll match your existing fittings and slopes so new work drops into the line you already run.
Do you weld anything besides stainless?
Not in this shop — keeping the building stainless-only is how we guarantee no carbon-steel contamination reaches your product lines. For structural or carbon work we'll happily refer a shop we trust.
Planning an Expansion or a New Line?
Walk us through it — we'll bring the spec questions, the schedule that protects production, and a number that holds.
Tell Us About Your Line
One business day to a reply. Bring drawings if you have them — a phone photo of the cellar works too.