Anheuser-Busch Soulard Campus, Historic Landmark Industrial Roofing
The Anheuser-Busch main campus in Soulard is among the most complex roofing environments in the St Louis metro. The campus includes the Brew House (built 1892, a National Historic Landmark), the Stables (circa 1885, now a visitor attraction), the original lager cellars, and a continuous accretion of production, packaging, and administrative buildings from every decade of the twentieth century through today's facilities. The historic buildings are managed under the preservation requirements associated with their landmark designation, and any roofing work on or adjacent to these buildings coordinates with the campus's historic preservation program.
The production buildings on the AB campus present the chemical compatibility requirements of an active large-scale brewery. Grain-dust exhaust systems, fermentation-tank vent stacks, packaging-line chemical exhausts, and refrigeration system equipment penetrate the roofs of multiple production buildings. At each of these penetrations, the membrane flashing is exposed to the specific chemical environment of that exhaust stream, and standard TPO or EPDM flashings may not provide adequate chemical resistance in some of those environments. We specify the membrane and flashing system on AB campus production buildings after reviewing the chemical profile of each rooftop penetration with the campus facilities engineering team.
The campus's institutional scale also means that roofing projects coordinate through a capital project management process, pre-construction meetings with the campus facilities director, safety program review, and documentation requirements that reflect AB InBev's global contractor management standards. We plan for that process timeline and produce the documentation that the campus facilities management team requires.
Schlafly Beer, Tap Room on Locust and Bottleworks in Maplewood
Schlafly's Tap Room in Midtown St Louis occupies the former Lemp Brewery building at 2100 Locust Street, a 1911 bottling plant building that is on the National Register of Historic Places. The building was adaptively reused for Schlafly's flagship brewpub and has been expanded and renovated multiple times since opening in 1991. The roof systems on the Tap Room building reflect that history, multiple additions and renovation phases have created a complex assemblage of roof systems of different ages and specifications.
Schlafly's Bottleworks in Maplewood is a more contemporary brewery facility, a purpose-built production and taproom building with a simpler roof geometry and a more recent membrane system. The Bottleworks presents the standard craft brewery roofing challenge: exhaust penetrations from the brewhouse and fermentation floor create chemical exposure at the membrane surface that standard commercial roofing details need to account for.
For Schlafly and comparable mid-scale craft breweries in St Louis, I spec a PVC or TPO membrane with a documented chemical resistance profile for the specific chemical environment at each penetration. Not every membrane is appropriate for every brewery exhaust, the choice depends on what is coming out of the stack, at what concentration and temperature, and how the flashing at that penetration will be maintained.
St Louis Craft Brewing Cluster, Maplewood, the Grove, and Lafayette Square
The craft brewing cluster that has established itself in Maplewood, the Grove (Manchester Avenue), and Lafayette Square represents the most active growth segment of the St Louis brewing industry over the past decade. These breweries occupy a mix of repurposed industrial buildings, former auto dealerships, light manufacturing facilities, and neighborhood commercial buildings, and new construction purpose-built for brewing operations.
The repurposed industrial buildings in this cluster present the layered construction-history challenge that is common throughout St Louis's mid-century building stock. A Maplewood craft brewer in a 1950s auto dealership may have a roof system that was installed during the building's last commercial use, repaired multiple times by the previous tenant, and never documented. When We inspect these buildings for a brewery client, We document the existing system completely, membrane type, condition, insulation status, drain capacity, before any scope recommendation is made.
Craft brewery clients in these markets are also making capital decisions that are integrated with their business plan. A taproom operator investing in a building renovation to add a production line is evaluating the roofing capital expenditure alongside the tank, glycol system, and packaging line investments. We produce scopes and cost projections that give the brewery owner the information they need to make that integrated capital decision, not a roofing proposal disconnected from the building's overall renovation context.
Chemical Compatibility and Membrane Selection for Brewery Buildings
Breweries generate a specific set of chemical exposures at roof penetrations that affect membrane selection more than any other industrial building type. Fermentation produces CO2 that vents through pressure-relief systems. Cleaning-in-place operations use caustic (sodium hydroxide) and acid (phosphoric or nitric acid) cleaning agents that exhaust through roof-mounted ventilation. Grain handling generates airborne organic dust that settles on roof surfaces and in drain systems. Each of these exposures has implications for the membrane and flashing materials at each penetration.
TPO is generally adequate for brewery exhaust environments except where concentrated acid or solvent exposures are present. PVC provides better chemical resistance for applications with significant acid or plasticizer-bearing exhaust streams. EPDM is not appropriate where petroleum-bearing exposures are present, but performs well in CO2-dominant fermentation environments. We review the chemical profile of each rooftop penetration with the brewery's facilities team before specifying the membrane and flashing system at that location.
Drain management on brewery buildings also requires more attention than on standard industrial buildings. Yeast, hop debris, grain fines, and cleaning chemical residues that reach roof drains create accelerated clogging that can produce ponding water conditions on flat-roof sections with limited positive drainage. We specify drain screens, maintenance protocols, and in some cases auxiliary drain capacity on brewery buildings where the production process generates significant organic debris that could reach the roof drain system.
Humidity, Chemical Exposure, and Brewery Roofing in St. Louis
The St. Louis brewing industry, fastened historically by Anheuser-Busch's massive South St. Louis facility and extended by the regional craft brewery expansion throughout the city and inner suburbs, produces a specific roofing environment. Brewery rooftop exhaust carries steam, CO2, and cleaning chemical discharge from the sanitizing cycle that creates conditions incompatible with standard TPO at exhaust discharge points. PVC or EPDM specification at exhaust zones is standard for brewery buildings where rooftop exhaust management is not fully contained upstream.
The humidity generated by brewing operations affects the internal environment of brewery buildings in ways that have roofing implications. High interior humidity produces vapor drive toward the roof assembly, and the insulation and vapor control layers in the replacement specification need to account for the building's specific vapor pressure profile. We assess the vapor drive conditions at St. Louis brewery buildings before specifying the replacement assembly and include the vapor management strategy in the specification documentation.
