Brewhouse - challenges and solutions
Industrial equipment for brewhouse efficiency
High energy usage, ingredient loss, high water consumption and spoilage are just some of the most common issues in wort production. Cleaning and fouling can also impact process times and then there's the problem of what to do with the trub and spent grain.
Alfa Laval offers extraordinary solutions to ordinary problems, to ensure efficiency and excellent performance in commercial brewing.
Wort preparation
Challenge
- Too wet spent grains
Solution
- Spent grains dewatering by Alfa Laval Decanters
Outcome
- Dewatered spent grains up to 70% humidity
Challenge
- High energy consumption
Solution
- Energy recovery system incorporating Alfa Laval Plate heat exchangers
Outcome
- Energy reduction of up to 40% by reuse of energy from wort boiling to heat subsequent brews
Challenge
- Poor heat transfer due to fouling of brew kettle and poor cleaning
Solution
Outcome
- Replacing spray balls with rotary jet heads that handle in-flow particulates to clean all brew kettle internal surfaces helps improve brewhouse efficiency and hygiene
Whirlpool
Challenge
- Wort quality
- Wort loss
- Inefficient trub separation sequence
- Trub too wet causing downstream and disposal issues
Outcome
- Improved wort clarity before cooling
- Recovery of wort lost as trub increases overall yield
- Shortened process times and improved trub separation
- Significantly drier trub (which can be sold on as animal feed additive)
- Less risk of wort cooler fouling
- Reduced flushing and energy consumption between brews