COMMENTS from Moffat Beach Brewing Co.
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Hi ***,
Sorry for my late reply, I have been very busy.
Overall we have been very happy with the equipment and service that we have received from Tiantai. The sales rep that we have dealt with is Damon Shuke and he has been great.
For our first little brewery we went through an Australian based consultant that looked after the instal, shipping, commissioning, etc. As I was coming from a home brewing background with no commercial brewing experience we felt that by going down that route we would minimise any complications.
Whilst this was the best option for us at the time there is no way that I would use one of these services again as I now have the necessary skill set to do it myself. We also decided not to use companies such as S***, P**** or D** as all of these companies actually get their equipment manufactured in China and you save quite a considerable amount of money by dealing direct with the Chinese.
In 2018 my wife and I flew to Shanghai for the CBB Expo. This was an extremely valuable R&D trip as most of the Chinese brewery manufacturers were all in the one place at the one time and we were able to inspect the varying quality of workmanship between the different manufacturers.
There was an enormous amount of crap equipment on display but there were also a number of companies that had gear that was great quality.
We were happy to get quotes off the following companies:
Tiantai
H****
L*** (manufactured our small original brewery in our brewpub at Moffat Beach)
H**, H** construct equipment for P****** & S**** (not to be confused with H* Machinery as their equipment was atrocious)
L**** (Manufacturer of Brewdog’s stuff)
We decided to go with Tiantai as they seemed to hit the sweet spot in terms of price and quality, they also have a fairly strong track record here in Australia with Ballistic, Black Hops, Your Mates, 10 Toes, Soapbox, Sealegs, Semi-Pro (now Black Hops Brisbane), Bonehead and many others installing TianTai breweries.
As stated before we have been very happy with the quality of the equipment and the level of service provided by TianTai but it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.
Our equipment was supposed to arrive here in Australia in late December/early January but TianTai did fall behind on their proposed timeline before Covid erupted.
When Covid hit China hard during Chinese New Year a lot of the factory work force was away from Shandong visiting family and then the country went into hard lockdown. When the factory was permitted to open back up a lot of their workforce were absent as they were not permitted to travel from where they were visiting family back to Shandong. Damon told me that only 40% of the factory workforce was working when they were permitted to open back up.
Due to the factory being closed for a substantial amount of time and a diminished workforce our lead time blew out considerably, however we fully understand that these circumstances are extremely unusual for all of us.
We had originally planned for the TianTai technicians to come out from China and commission the brewery for us but the Covid situation meant that this was not possible. Therefore we had no choice but to install and commission the brewery ourselves. Whilst this was extremely daunting at the time I now feel that it was a blessing in disguise as I now know the pipework and equipment intimately.
If ordering equipment from TianTai or any other Chinese manufacturer be very specific about exactly what you want and how you want things to operate, don’t haggle on price and make sure you check and double check everything before pulling the trigger.
We have had a very positive experience using TianTai and I would use them again if I was mad enough to build another brewery.
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Hope this helps.
Cheers,
M***
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Damon Shuke
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