The wide world of separation technology

Solid-Liquid Separation | Water, hops, yeast and malt – the raw materials used to brew traditional craft beer hardly ever stray from these four ingredients. However, aside from high-quality raw materials, utilising equipment and technology ideally suited for producing these beers also plays a critical role. Of great importance in this respect are certainly the processes of separation and filtration, not only of wort and beer, but also of water, yeast and not least of all the reusable constituents at the end of the production chain.

Cooperation between Quality Assurance and Master Brewers (Part 1)

A common goal | Those, who have worked in a medium-sized or large brewery may have made the experience that cooperation between chemists, microbiologists or technicians from the quality assurance departments, in short called “QA”, and master brewers, process managers and packaging line managers, in short called “master brewers”, could be more efficient and built on trust. This series of articles aims at fostering an interest in and an understanding of one another because QA and brew masters have a common goal.

TPO: Getting the Whole Picture

TPO calculation | The specific measurement of dissolved oxygen (DO) in beverages is a well-known, frequently used, and straightforward analytical procedure which yields highly precise results. However, sometimes it is not enough to know how much oxygen is dissolved in the beverage as also the oxygen in the head space may affect the product. Therefore, head space oxygen needs to be considered as well.

Highly accurate continuous measurements help improve quality consistency

Reliable instrument | Consumers like beer that is not subject to quality and taste fluctuations and brewers are working to come up to their expectations. The following article explains how the latest measurement technology helps increase visibility into the fermentation process, thus contributing to constant quality.

Cooperation between Quality Assurance and Master Brewers (Part 5)

Important collaboration | In Part 4 of this series of articles (BRAUWELT International No. 6, 2018, pp. 437-439), examples of how a master brewer can use and interpret early warnings from the QA department in a brewery were presented, all the way through from raw materials to the final beer. Doing this rapidly makes faster corrections possible and reduces cost.

Everything still tight? Heat exchanger inspection with test gas

Maintenance | The Oettinger brewery prevents unplanned standstills of their heat exchangers by annual leakage tests. The company prefers test gas for their tests, thus preventing the operational procedure from being affected.

Cooperation between Quality Assurance and Master Brewers (Part 4)

Early warnings | In Part 3 of this series of articles (BRAUWELT International No. 5, 2018, pp. 367-370), examples of QA documents in a brewery were examined and an efficient brewery sampling plan was suggested as well as simple, daily process controls, from raw materials all the way to the finished beer. Part 4 focusses on how to interpret and make use of early warnings originating from the laboratory.

Yeast Storage – Influence on Fermentation Activity and Vitality

Yeast recycling | Yeasts are usually used for one fermentation cycle in industrial fermentation. In the brewing industry, however, yeasts are recycled several times, also as a result of a continuous succession of production processes. Consistent and, in particular, reproducible fermentation results have to be obtained. Optimal yeast management is required in order to achieve this objective. Moreover, the number of cycles is crucial for fermentation performance and depends on the yeast strain as well as on the experience and philosophy of the brewmaster.

Cooperation between Quality Assurance and Master Brewers (Part 3)

Microbiological analysis | In Part 2 of this series of articles (BRAUWELT International No. 4, 2018, pp. 274-276) several current QA documents that breweries have to treat as controlled documents were presented, along with a sample plan and some simple analyses that a brewery should carry out, such as organoleptic and visual checks. Filterability of beer by means of simple analyses was also discussed. In this part, microbiological analyses of beer during production are described. In addition, possibilities for reducing i.a. losses in the brewhouse are considered.

The biotechnology company now offers two new real-time PCR tests for the detection of the most important spoilage yeasts in beer, alcoholic mixed beverages and soft drinks: the foodproof^® Spoilage Yeast Detection 1 + 2 LyoKits.

As part of a longstanding partnership, measuring instrument specialist Anton Paar and statistical process control (SPC) solutions provider InfinityQS^® have launched a guide for setting up the interface between Davis 5 and Enact^® or ProFicient^TM software.