Brewery Service

Beer Filling - Filling machine

Beer is a beverage containing carbon dioxide. Filling should meet its physical characteristics, chemical characteristics and hygiene requirements, and keep the quality of beer before and after filling not changing much. Therefore, the following basic principles must be followed during the filling process:

(1) During the filling process, the beer should be isolated from the air as much as possible. Even a small amount of oxygen will affect the quality of beer, therefore, it is required that the oxygen absorption during the filling process should not exceed 0.02~0.04mg/L

(2) During the filling process, the beer should always maintain the corresponding pressure. Otherwise, carbon dioxide will escape and affect the quality of the beer.

(3) During the filling process, keep hygienic. The structure of the filling equipment is complicated, and it must be cleaned frequently to ensure the sanitation of the process. It is necessary to clean not only the parts that are in direct contact with beer, but also all equipment.

(4) Strict quality control should be carried out during the filling process. It is necessary to carry out regular and regular quality and sanitation inspections on the filling process.

The basic requirements of beer filling mainly include: small loss of beer; accurate filling volume; small change in the internal quality of beer. In order to achieve the above goals, it is necessary to take corresponding measures, such as preventing beer from being contaminated with bacteria, preventing beer from contacting with air, and avoiding loss of carbon dioxide. Especially keeping the carbon dioxide in the beer has more important significance. The loss of carbon dioxide is particularly damaging to the quality of beer, so the pressure of the beer must always be kept about 0.1MPa higher than the saturation equilibrium pressure of carbon dioxide during the entire filling process

The way beer is filled

The filling of beer is based on the principle of equal pressure filling. According to the difference in the pressure relationship between the bottle and the tank during the filling process, the beer filling can be divided into the following two ways:

(1) Isobaric filling method: When the pressure between the bottle and the tank reaches equilibrium, the beer flows naturally into the bottle relying on the liquid level difference (that is, its own weight).

(2) Differential pressure filling method: the pressure of the wine tank is slightly higher than the pressure in the bottle, and the liquid is injected into the bottle under the action of differential pressure.

filling machine

According to the conveying method of the bottle, the filling machine can be divided into a linear filling machine and a rotary filling machine. The linear filling machine is to make the container convey intermittently along the straight line periodically, and complete the filling at the intermittent time. It is suitable for filling still beverages. The rotary filling machine is suitable for beer filling.

working principle

The filling machine used in the brewery is generally a rotary filling machine. According to the size of the production capacity, the number of filling valves is mostly 100~200. Bottles are fed into the filling machine by the bottle infeed conveyor belt. The bottles are separated at a certain distance by the bottle feeding screw (fixed distance separation mechanism), and enter the bottle tray which can be lifted and lowered through the bottle feeding star wheel, so that the bottles are positioned under the filling valve and the filling operation is completed.

The operation process of the filling machine is: the bottle is pushed up and positioned on the filling valve, after one or two times of vacuuming, back pressure operation, equal pressure filling, liquid level correction, pressure relief, and finally the bottle is released with the bottle tray Lowered and sent out of the filling machine.

Among these steps, the most important and time-consuming step is the beer filling process, which accounts for about half of the entire process. Since the wine filling time cannot be shortened arbitrarily, in order to increase the production capacity of the machine, the only way to increase the number of filling valves is to increase the rotation diameter of the machine. The diameter of the small filling "turntable" is only 1.4m, while that of a large filling machine can reach more than 5m. The production capacity of filling machines with large diameters is generally higher, and the capacity of modern large-scale filling machines can be as high as 40,000 to 60,000 bottles per hour.

In actual production, the filling machine and the capping machine are used together because the beer must be capped immediately after filling to prevent the beer from contacting oxygen and losing carbon dioxide.