Samuel Adams Brewery, Breinigsville, Pennsylvania

Overview: In recent years, the Samuel Adams Brewery in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania has undergone over $100 million in expansions and improvements. The underlying limestone and associated karst features (sinkholes, rock pinnacles, raveled zones, top of rock variability) presented various foundation support challenges for new development. GeoStructures thus christened a new approach in foundation design which focused on detailed subsurface site characterization, devised compaction grouting to mitigate sinkhole issues, and prepared the subgrade for cost-effective mat foundations, ultimately resulting in a dramatic reduction in foundation costs.

Over the past several years, GeoStructures has served as the Geotechnical Engineer of Record for a dozen capital projects at the Samuel Adams Brewery facility. Our services included geotechnical investigations, design and oversight of compaction grouting operations to stabilize sinkholes and karst-related weakness, and construction inspections of shallow and mat foundations. The use of compaction grouting remediated local weak zones in the soil and rock, increased bearing capacity, and made shallow foundations feasible for the various proposed structures (as opposed to costly, deep foundations). The projects included:

• 48 new storage silos (75-ft high)
• A new refrigeration building
• Refrigeration building expansion
• Pasteurizer pad expansion
• Nitrogen tanks and vaporizer pad
• New water tanks
• F cellar slab-on-grade evaluation
• Receiving bay expansion
• New alcohol tanks
• Air-cooled chiller
• CIP building
• Main building addition