Safe Transport and Custody
This control applies between every gate — farm to storage, storage to malt house, malt to extract, extract to brewery, brewery to distribution and point of sale. A chain that is spotless at every facility can still fail in the truck between them.
The boundary rule
Test the lot before it leaves. Test it when it arrives — or sign acceptance of the shipment and its commercial risk. Record who controlled it in between. Without boundary evidence, every custodian can blame the next one and nobody can prove where contamination entered.
Control the vehicle
Transport is a storage and cross-contact gate on wheels.
- Fitness. The vehicle or container must be clean, dry, and free of gluten-grain residue — a rail car or trailer that last carried wheat is a contamination source until it is cleaned and verified.
- No risky co-loads. Do not haul gluten-free grain or malt alongside gluten grain where dust or spillage can cross.
- Seals and tamper evidence on bulk shipments, checked on arrival, so custody is provable.
- Condition in transit. Protect grain and malt from moisture and heat to preserve germination and prevent mold; keep finished beer cold, or consistently warm, never mixed.
Put responsibility in writing
Transport and custody agreements should assign, at minimum:
- intake condition and sanitary responsibility
- outtake condition
- boundary sampling
- investigation cost, and replacement or rush-replacement cost
These are commercial terms that require qualified legal drafting — they are business allocations of risk, not automatic conclusions about legal damages.
Documentation travels with the lot
The batch ID, the relevant certificates, and the acceptance/condition records move with the shipment, and the receiver inspects against them before accepting. Custody is only as good as the paper trail that proves who had the lot, in what condition, and when.
Back to the QA Trust Chain.