Today’s competitive market in the craft brewing industry has generated a plethora of beer choices for today’s consumer.    Old warehouse district buildings are gutted, refurbished, and today represent some of the most popular hot spots for the production and consumption of craft beers.   These spaces are filled with the kind of hard reflective surfaces that date back to the greatest generation, with brick walls, concrete floors, exposed wooden joist ceilings, and those impressive metal casks filled with brewing suds.    As the brewery owners welcome their guests in to enjoy the local flavors, the perimeter surfaces of the room for intensive spikes in decibel level exposure.    Guests are uncomfortable, repeat business is threatened, and as a result, the more progressive brewery owners are more and more turning for help to acoustic companies for their assistance in retrofitting their space with sound control panels.

Flat surfaces reflect noise

The surfaces you will find in a brewery on average will absorb about 5% of the sound waves reflecting around inside the space.   These forces echo to carry for up to 10 seconds in the room.   The human ear tolerates just 2 seconds or less worth of echo before that background noise begins to interfere with audible sound signals.   As a result, voices are raised up over the intensity levels of the background noise in the brewery, generating continued spikes in noise levels that threaten the comfort of the guest and the long-term viability of the business.   Simply put, those brewery’s that are serious about their craft have begun to pay as much attention to the acoustics within their space as they do the recipes they are brewing.

Noise Reduction For Your Brewery: Protect Your Patrons

To solve the issue of unwanted noise levels in a bar, the goal is to introduce a set of acoustic panels, wall or ceiling mounted, that can combine to collectively capture and convert the echoes out of the space.   Up to 80% of the unwanted echoes in a room can be captured by sound panels, delivering dramatic drops in perceived noise levels, and greater ease in communication among the patrons enjoying their craft beers.    Sound panels can be surface mounted to perimeter walls, they can be floated off the ceiling as clouds, or suspended vertically off the ceiling as a sound baffle.   In any case, the positioning of the panels matters not so long as enough of the sound panel is introduced into the room, to begin with.   A simple Room Analysis can be performed by an established acoustics firm to help diagnose the treatment, define the panel count and coverage, price the project out, and get the sound panels produced and shipped to the project site within 4 weeks.

Sound panels help with noise reduction

Sound panels work by capturing sound waves and converting them to kinetic energy, which in turn dissipates unnoticed out of the room.   Cloth wrapped panels can be mounted around the top 1/3 of the wall space around the perimeter of the brewery, available in dozens of colors.   These same panels could also have customized digital imagery printed on to them to showcase as large murals on large expansive brick walls.   Panels can be cut up to 10’ tall.  

Generating the same sound values, the walls can also be left alone, and the panels can be placed into the ceiling to “hover” over the top of the room.   Again, the key to the success of the sound values triggered is to ensure that you do not under treat the space.   Let your acoustic supplier run their formula’s for you to determine what that sound panel count would look like.   And to save on the overall estimated cost of the soundproofing project, work with suppliers who allow you to self install the sound panels.   Panel systems are easy to work with, they are lightweight, and directionless…you can place them as you wish throughout the confines of your brewery.

Get questions answered on soundproofing

For more information on soundproofing your local brewery, bar, restaurant, or bistro, contact NetWell Noise Control for more information on the effectiveness of a sound panel treatment, and what kind of costs would be associated with retrofitting your existing brewery with noise reduction sound panels.   Call 1-800-638-9355 or visit them online at www.controlnoise.com