Every factory have its own inspection system, IQC/ IPQC/ FQC, those quality inspection process can help factory to control quality from first beginning to final products.
The function of IQC would focus on incoming materials, they would check if the supplied material can meet the standard or customized technical requirement. Fail on IQC would create high percentage of B and C lever of final items.
IPQC would be responsible for manufacturing process, to check if the semi-products or certain procedure can meet the requirement. So there would be several IPQC in each line, to supervise the manufacturing process, to ensure each part is accurate, can meet standard.
FQC is final inspection for whole products. For FQC engineer, they would have a checking list, list all inspection points, and mention the standard to judge A/B or C.
If B or C level items take percentage limitation, they would conclude failure of whole batch, and highlight to production manager level to request for rework.
Below are most of key points for an insulated growler:
- Surface:
For stainless steel surface, check if the surface is smooth, the rough surface may caused via polishing process, if polishing workers are skillful, each polish would be correct force.
- Lid:
Either stainless steel lid or plastic lid, it should match growler neck size; the perfect space would allow clients to thread lid smoothly and sealed well, without leakage beer or air. A good performance of growler should be able to keep draft beer carbonation for at least 2 weeks.
- Temperature Testing:
Normally growler factory would do heat gas testing for twice, 1st testing is after vacuum, because the welding process maybe flabby, the weak point would easy to cause un-vacuum. The 2nd testing is after manual polishing, both electrical polishing and manual polishing would have high risk of break vacuum layer. During electrical polishing, if the pole touch growler wall, it would breakdown the wall, and acid chemical liquid will go inside of vacuum layer. Those growlers would be B level since there is acid residuum in between will cause low vacuum rate. The high level factory would did 3rd testing by keeping the growlers for another 2-4 weeks, to find out some slow-leakage B growler. This additional testing process would increase the cost but lower chance for a B growler into market.
- Taste testing:
This would be done only after you buy a growler, and fill with beer, drink it, taste it. After surveying tasting of hundreds home brewers and bartenders in Portland beer festival, beer lovers voted the growlers with special inside treatment with 76%, what’s the special inside treatment they did for this top growler?
We interviewed the owner of this top growler, and got contact information of China OEM growler factory. Last month, we visited this growler factory, and got chance to talk with CTO, to publish this “special craft” today, it’s PASSIVATION!
“When US brand growler founder visited our factory in 2015, he told me his big confusion, or we can say, it’s his big headache”, said the CTO. “He said, he bring his growler to several breweries and do testing, but there was metal smell after they tasted the beer with his growler”, he asked me “do you have any solution to remove the metal tasting?” “Nobody wanted to taste beer with metal, it spoil the fantastic taste of draft beer”. “Then we tried many ways to do inside treatment, but none of them can 100% remove the metal taste” CTO explained. “Until one day, our sales manager, Monica asked me, why there is not metal taste by using tradition stainless steel beer barrel, 30/50 Liter, 1/2, 1/4 or 1/6BBL? The inside/outside treatment of 1/2bbl beer barrel is passivation, can we try inside only?” “So, from that day, we successes do passivation for our 64oz beer growler, and deliver to SGS shanghai lab, today, we are happy to say, we are the first beer growler factory to use passivation craft to remove metal taste, and keep original draft beer flavor maximum.”
So, today if you have a growler, with nice surface, no leakage, can keep draft beer carbonation for 2 weeks. When you fill draft beer of 2-4 degree, you bring it outside for 6 hours in summer time, when you open lid, you can drink a chilled draft beer @ 5-8 degree, no metal taste, it worth to own it, enjoy with friends!