Brewery

What is the brewing industry?

The brewing industry, aka brewing, is a highly specialized type of beverage production that requires both specialized knowledge and equipment to achieve optimal results. First, let’s review insights into the art and science behind this ancient craft.

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What is the brewing industry?

The brewing industry, aka brewing, is a highly specialized type of beverage production that requires both specialized knowledge and equipment to achieve optimal results. First, let’s review insights into the art and science behind this ancient craft.

A facility for making beer is called a brewery. Beermaking has been around for a long time: historical evidence shows that this popular drink was made in Mesopotamia as far back as 2500 BC. Brewing was initially a cottage industry, with production taking place at home. By the ninth century, though, monasteries and farms were producing beer on a large scale and selling the excess. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries larger, dedicated breweries were being built that were designed for commercial production.

Modern breweries are very diverse in terms of: 

• The processes they use
• Their degrees of automation
• The types of beers they produce

Breweries also range widely in size, from large commercial operations — such as those run by Anheuser-Busch — to small, mom-and-pop craft breweries producing a limited range of specialized brews. Regardless of the size or nature of the brewery, all share some commonalities in the beermaking process.

The brewing of beer requires both the heating and cooling of the product at various steps in the process. 

• Heating is usually achieved with the use of pressurized steam in large commercial breweries, although direct-fire systems are not unusual in small breweries. 
• Cooling of the product is typically done with heat exchangers and then with cooling jackets that surround the beverage tanks, allowing the brewer to precisely control the temperature of each tank individually (although whole-room cooling is also used in larger breweries).

Like most food production, the manufacturing of beer is a sanitary process regulated by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Therefore the equipment used in brewery operations must be constructed from approved materials deemed suitable for hygienic processing. To this end, brewery equipment that comes into contact with the product is made predominantly from austenitic stainless steel in 304, 316, or 316L compounds (although in smaller brewhouses, tanks and vessels that are in public view may have a decorative copper cladding to impart a nostalgic look). 

Stainless steel is an ideal metal for use in breweries: it has a highly polished finish that makes it easy to clean and imparts no flavor to the beer being processed.

The craft brew industry

The brewing process itself is typically divided into nine steps: 

1. Milling
2. Malting
3. Mashing
4. Lautering
5. Boiling
6. Fermenting
7. Conditioning
8. Filtering
9. Filling 

With respect to the first three steps, raw grains are first milled to achieve the correct size for beer production; malted; and then mashed with water to form a slurry. This mixture is then heated and rested at controlled temperatures, allowing enzymes in the malt to break down the starches in the grain into sugars, especially maltose (malt sugar). 

Next, the process of lautering is used to separate the mash enzymes from the spent grain, creating a substance called wort. This process step calls for the use of specialized equipment, either wide vessels built with a false bottom or plate-and-frame filters designed for this type of ingredients separation. The two-stage lautering process is initiated with what’s called wort run-off, in which the wort extract is separated in an undiluted state from the spent grains, and then sparging, where any extract that remains on the grains is rinsed off with hot water.

Next comes boiling, one of the key steps in the brewing process; executed inside the brewhouse “kettle.” Here, the wort is boiled to ensure its sterility, preventing contamination with undesirable microbes. During the boil, hops are added to the wort mixture, contributing flavor and aroma components to the beer, and helping to impart the beverage’s characteristic bitterness. Boiling also allows proteins in the wort to coagulate and the pH of the wort mixture to fall, helping to inhibit the growth of bacteria. Additionally, boiling is necessary to volatize unwanted compounds, such as dimethyl sulfides, which could result in off-flavors to the finished beer. This boiling step continues for between 60 and 120 minutes, depending on its intensity, the schedule for hops addition during the process, and the volume of the wort the brewer is trying to evaporate. The process must be carefully controlled so that it is both even and intense.

After the wort mixture is boiled, it is cooled and transferred to a fermentation vessel. Yeast is then added to initiate the fermentation process. During fermentation, sugars in the wort mixture are metabolized into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The solids in the mixture, including yeast, slowly settle to the bottom of the vessel, and are later flushed out. When the sugars in the fermenting beer have been almost completely digested, the fermentation process slows, and then the conditioning of the beer starts by cooling the fermentation tanks with cooling jackets. Some beers may be conditioned only slightly during this step, or even not at all, depending on the desired final product.

Then comes filtering, which helps stabilize the beer’s flavor and gives the product a polished, shiny look. Filtering is an optional process, and the degree to which it is carried out will vary with the final product. Some raft brewers simply remove the coagulated and settled solids in the fermentation vessel after the cooling and conditioning step and forego any additional filtration. Others use filtration presses, inline filters, or centrifuges to separate clean beer from solids not wanted in the finished product. Finally, the filtered beer is transferred to a calibrated measurement vessel from which it is transferred into its final finished package, which might be a bottle, can, or keg.

Regardless of whether you’re running a major commercial brewery or a small craft brewing operation, CSI has the people and parts to keep you brewing. We have the industry expertise and problem-solving capabilities that are geared specifically to the hygienic processing industries, including beer making and other food processing operations. 

CSI is available to help with the design, engineering, manufacturing, and maintenance of all aspects of your brewery operations. Call us today at 417-831-1411 to learn more.