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How to reduce beer loss during beer brewing?

May 14, 2024
yanan

7998
brewery equipment

Total beer loss refers to the ratio of the loss in each process to the total amount during the beer production process. It is the sum of cooling loss rate, fermentation loss rate, filtration loss rate, and packaging loss rate. The loss of beer is undoubtedly a financial burden for any business. Therefore, reducing and minimizing the loss of beer within their respective areas of responsibility has become one of the important goals for each of our employees to work together. This article will focus on beer losses during saccharification and fermentation.

1. Loss of mashed beer

During the cooling process from hot to cold wort, a series of losses are experienced. These losses mainly include:

Wort shrinkage caused by temperature changes: As the temperature decreases, the wort will shrink in volume, resulting in the loss of part of the wort.

The impact of hop grains and hop separation: The hop grains will retain part of the wort in the wort, and a certain amount of wort will also be taken away during the hop separation process. These are inevitable losses during the cooling process.

Expansion effect of the wort boiling pot: During the wort boiling stage, the pot body will increase due to thermal expansion, but this effect does not directly contribute to the loss of wort during the cooling process, but the control of the boiling process has a significant impact on the final wort. The total amount also has a certain impact.

Evaporation of water during cooling: During cooling, water is lost through evaporation. The amount of this evaporative loss will vary significantly depending on the cooling equipment employed.

As for the "real losses" from hot wort to cold wort, that is, those factors that will not be restored due to temperature changes and directly reduce the total amount of wort, they mainly include:

Absorption of hops: The presence of hops in the wort will absorb a certain amount of wort, and this part of the wort is a permanent loss.

Absorption of coagulum: During the cooling and subsequent processing of wort, coagulum will be formed, and these coagulum will also absorb the wort, resulting in a reduction of wort.

Wort remaining in pipelines and equipment: During the wort transportation and processing process, some wort will remain in the pipelines and equipment. This part of wort is difficult to recover and is also an important factor in the reduction of the total amount of wort.
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2. Loss of fermented beer

Precisely control the wort switching: In the initial stage of receiving the wort, it is necessary to ensure the timeliness of the top water switching to avoid the wort being drained due to too late switching. After the wort is received, the switching operation of the water top wine should be accurately controlled to avoid premature switching and wort loss. In order to ensure the accuracy of the switching, the operation method of receiving wort should be unified, and the operator should be required to monitor the sight glass on site and switch in time according to the change of the color of the wine.

Effectively manage condensate discharge: After the wort tank is full, when discharging condensate, you should pay close attention to the opening degree of the bottom valve and minimize the opening. Once the presence of wort is observed, the bottom valve should be closed immediately to reduce the loss of wine by increasing the number of discharges and reducing the amount of discharge each time. The cold condensate wort recovery device can be used to recover and reuse the wort in the condensate.

Optimize the yeast recovery process: During the yeast recovery process, the amount of wine liquid that is recovered to the yeast tank should be minimized. By reducing the opening of the bottom valve of the fermentation tank, a smaller flow rate is used to recover the yeast to reduce the loss of wine liquid. The operator needs to observe the yeast consistency in the sight glass of the recovery pipeline and the rising liquid level of the yeast tank on site, and adjust the opening of the bottom valve or close the bottom valve in time according to the actual situation.

Reasonable control of fermentation tank filling capacity: In order to avoid losses caused by overflow of high-foaming wine, the fermentation tank filling capacity should be controlled at about 80%, leaving 20% space to deal with the foam generated during the fermentation process.
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3. Other factors affecting wine loss

(1) The pipeline design is unreasonable, resulting in incomplete wine discharge and wine damage during transportation;

(2) The wine valve of the filling machine is not sealed, causing the liquid level of the bottle to fluctuate, causing filling losses;

(3) The operator filled the filtered wine immediately without allowing it to stabilize for 8 hours, causing wine to spray;

(4) Losses caused by rough handling during the shipment of finished wine.

In view of the above beer loss factors, we need to formulate and implement strict operating procedures, strengthen employee training and supervision, ensure that each employee can minimize the loss of wine within their own areas of responsibility, and improve the economic benefits of the enterprise.

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