Second Hand  Colorado’s breweries trade beer equipment like
baseball cards. April 2011  Starting a brewery is an expensive
proposition: You need loads of space, tons of ingredients, and
thousands of dollars in equipment. Hence, the hot secondhand
market—when breweries outgrow their tanks, bottling lines, and
silos, they often sell off their gear to upstarts and smaller
breweries. As Colorado’s largest craft brewer, New Belgium
Brewing Company has handed down enough gear to start several
breweries; co-founder Jeff Lebesch’s original brewing equipment
actually cycled through four other breweries before returning
home as a piece of the company’s history. Stories abound: Five
years ago, Avery Brewing bought a couple of 80-barrel tanks from
New Belgium, which had outgrown the equipment. “We got them for
dirt—we basically stole them,” says Adam Avery, the brewery’s
founder. Avery left the plaques on the tanks, hoping there was a
little New Belgium business magic left inside. “Now we rub them
for good luck,” Avery s