2017 Energy Efficiency Award

The technology conglomerate from the Upper Palatinate has crafted a plan that is as detailed as it is future-friendly, designed to get a genuinely energy-self-sufficient, CO₂-neutral brewery up and running.

The company’s development team has been progressing the “Brewery of the Future” research project for quite a few months. In September of this year, the concept had finally matured sufficiently to be showcased for the first time to public at drinktec, the sector’s premier trade fair.

The issue of energy-efficient brewing is a highly topical one not only for the trade public, but also for consumers, as evidenced last Monday, the 20 November, at the Congress of the German Energy Agency (abbreviated to: dena), when the “Brewery of the Future” won the Public Prize of the Energy Efficiency Award.

Key components include:

- a biogas system for recovering the residual substances

- a modified unit-type cogeneration plant for producing heat and electricity

- continuous seven-days-a-week production for smoothing out load peaks

- an energy recovery system feeding surplus energy from the brewhouse to other steps in the process

- a new filling technology that enables the cooling energy available to be used for secondary processes

For a beer production volume of 2.6 million hectolitres, the energy-efficient brewery generates an annual surplus totalling 1,534 MWh of heat and 1,066 MWh of electricity, which can be sold on to other customers. The savings in terms of electricity come to 30 per cent in comparison to a standard brewery, and for thermal energy even to around 60 per cent.