Today, Tiantai will share practical water-saving strategies for craft beer brewing.
Beer production is inseparable from three major water-using areas: brewing water, cooling water, and washing water. In my country, the water consumption for producing 1 ton of beer is about 15 to 40 tons, while the brewing level abroad can reach less than 8 tons of water. The formation of this gap is mainly attributed to the following three factors:
- The production equipment is relatively backward, and simple cleaning methods are used when cleaning containers, equipment, and pipelines, and the cleaning effect is poor, resulting in huge water consumption. In addition, the equipment and pipeline planning is unreasonable, and a large amount of flushing water or pipeline water becomes inevitable.
- Many small craft breweries use traditional beer brewing technology to brew, with many processes and small equipment capacity. Many materials need to be cleaned each time of production, and there are many places where water is used.
- Insufficient water-saving awareness and inadequate recycling are common in some small craft breweries.
In response to these problems, we can start from the following two aspects to reduce the water consumption of beer equipment production.
Recycling and utilization of water in the beer brewing process
Mainly for cooling water and washing water. In the beer production process, this part of water accounts for 80% of the total water consumption, and there is huge potential for recycling:
(1) Recycle the cooling water entering the front section of the plate heat exchanger to achieve water reuse.
(2) In the refrigeration system, build a large-capacity water pool to collect cooling water for reuse. At the same time, the cooling water of the ammonia compressor and the air compressor can also be collected and circulated, greatly reducing the consumption of cooling water.
(3) All container washing water can be collected. Because its BOD and COD are extremely low and the pH value is weakly alkaline, it can be used to soak wheat, clean sewage pipes, floors, etc.
(4) Use CIP cleaning equipment to recycle the last water and use it for the next batch of saccharification water.
(5) Recycle the water from the steam heating device and mix it with the production water for saccharification or cleaning to further reduce water consumption.
Water-saving strategies for craft breweries
(1) Increase the flushing water pressure, shorten the flushing time, and reduce the amount of flushing water. During the cleaning process, try to reduce the water flow to avoid water waste.
(2) Reasonably arrange the number of tank cleaning times and the amount of saccharification water.
(3) Reasonably control the water usage time of the conveying pipeline and beer filtration equipment.
(4) Use the slag removal device to clean the waste such as heat coagulants and waste yeast before flushing with water to save flushing water.
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