The way we make Spindrift is changing in a HUGE way. For the better.

Introducing: Tanks

If you've been to a brewery, you've probably seen the story-high, metal tanks that line the outside of the building. These help create the fermentation that makes beer, beer. The same tanks are used for bulk sugar storage and used in the dairy industry, keeping large quantities of milk at a constant temperature for producing yogurt.

But we've never seen such equipment used before with sparkling water. (It could be because no one's really ever needed to keep perishable, real ingredients in the sparkling water world before - but we digress.) We're so excited to announce our tank installation!

What's in a tank?

In each of the 4 stainless steel, glycol-jacketed, temperature-controlled tanks, we will store our squeezed fruit. Inside each tank is agitation equipment that will help us keep the fruit moving so the pulp doesn't settle. We study the fruit carefully to make sure we're finding the best way to agitate it.

The goal is to keep our fruit at a constant, refrigerated temperature. So the glycol-jacket on the outer edge of the tank acts like a blanket that keeps everything inside it cold. The jacket is filled with a propylene-glycol/water mixture (food-grade anti-freeze) that keeps everything on the other side at the sweet-spot between cold and freezing.

Great Product, Even Better

It’s a gigantic undertaking (Literally. See: cranes.) to install these at our east-coast and west-coast production facilities. Our two east-coast tanks hold 30,000 gallons each and our two west-coast tanks hold 13,000 gallons each. That’s a whole lot of Spindrift.

In this case, more means better. To put it into perspective, one new tank of juice is the equivalent of 117 smaller drums of fruit. To make Spindrift, each drum has quite a journey, traveling in and out of refrigeration, having fruit pumped in and out, and more. That means the fruit is handled quite a lot.

But, when it comes to fruit, the less you handle it, the better. As our SVP of Operations, David, always puts it, “Do whatever you can to be most faithful to the fruit. The less handling, the more faithful you are to the fruit in its original state.” This handling (and inconsistent temperature) can impact taste, too.

If you imagine comparing a grapefruit that’s sitting in the fridge for 5 hours to to a grapefruit that’s sitting on your desk for 5 hours – you’ll have two very different grapefruit. The desk-fruit will have gone through a lot more change and will taste different than it would have in the fridge. Basically, fruit + heat = change. So that’s why temperature control is so important. It maintains the integrity and taste of that fresh, real fruit we’ve squeezed.

And by using the new tanks, we estimate that we’ll save around 12 hours of juice handling per batch! That’s pretty significant. These tanks will do huge things for our product quality and save a ton of time. A win/win really.

And they look very cool.

But the real reason we’re sharing this isn’t just because it’s super cool to upgrade equipment. It’s because making delicious, quality product is always our first priority. We think of Spindrift as a true craft – one that we’re always working to innovate and improve upon. These tanks take our whole production process to the next level so we’re able to keep sharing the real fruit + sparkling water with you.