New 'Commercial' 200l brewery

[Cazamodo]

Id certainly like to see how it works!
I'm pretty sure the other micro in town uses a room at the back kept at a constant temp with air con. But I dont think theres any separate fermenter control.

[asd]

Jacket cooling would be awkward to set up on 210 litre blue barrels, which is why I'm considering freezer/greeenhouse heaters in a 'cupboard'.

In the interests of keeping it simple, lots of ordinary hosepipe wrapped round a 210 litre barrel, well insulated, connected to a Maxi cooler may work. I did it on the 130 litre barrels last summer, and got down to 6 degrees O.K., but was using a big cooler.

[dloper]

Finally finished sheeting, sealing and painting the garage today. Next step is a bit of a tidy up before cutting a drainage channel in the concrete just outside the doors, then scrubbing and degreasing the floor prior to a coat of concrete sealant.

[Baldbrewer]

Good luck dude, wish I was as brave , somebody's got to live the dream.
I have a 20L braumeister and in all honesty my beer I made in my mango chutney boilers and cool box mash tun was just as good. It's just shiny instead and has a computer lol!

[asd]

I have a cold room in my brewery. The chiller broke. I was quoted £1500 to have a new unit. I wasn't willing to pay. I had a spare Cornelius 1000 unit (off ebay - £100). I took the cold flow from the water bath pump and passed it through a fan driven heat dump - making a cold dump. I put the Cornelius outside the cold room, passed the hoses through the wall, and put the "cold dump" inside. I can get the room down to around 4 degrees Centigrade. It chills around 50 casks no problem. The heat/cold dump units are about £200 new.

Alternatively, and I know another brewery has done this, obtain a split air conditioning unit, and use this to chill your area. There are lots available on Fleabay, etc. at sort of reasonable prices.

[jaberry]

I have a cold room in my brewery. The chiller broke. I was quoted £1500 to have a new unit. I wasn't willing to pay. I had a spare Cornelius 1000 unit (off ebay - £100). I took the cold flow from the water bath pump and passed it through a fan driven heat dump - making a cold dump. I put the Cornelius outside the cold room, passed the hoses through the wall, and put the "cold dump" inside. I can get the room down to around 4 degrees Centigrade. It chills around 50 casks no problem. The heat/cold dump units are about £200 new.

Alternatively, and I know another brewery has done this, obtain a split air conditioning unit, and use this to chill your area. There are lots available on Fleabay, etc. at sort of reasonable prices.

Idle Valley Brewing (harrybrew69 on YouTube) is setting up a brewery at the moment and regularly shows what's going on and he has done just that with the air con unit and insulation sheets to create a cold room

[dloper]

Meantime, I've bought some 50mm insulation sheet and I'll start on my cold and warm rooms this weekend. I want to build a warm room (20 degrees) to hold 2 x 210 litre fermenters and 1500 litres in bottles and pins. My cold area (7 degrees) will hold 2 x 210 litre bright tanks and 800 litres in bottles and pins. I'm going to experiment with upright freezers pointing into the rooms, greenhouse heaters and STC1000's in the hope that they'll keep the temperatures in range. With a Scottish winter coming up, I'm hopeful that this will work.

My beer calendar will be:
One week in a fermenter at 20 degrees
One week in a bright tank at 7 degrees
three weeks conditioning at 20 degrees
one week stored at 7 degrees

I'll post some pics as soon as I've made appreciable progress. I've been slowly working at it, but my job gets in the way. Hopefully, I'll be brewing in the next month or two.

[darkonnis]

Meantime, I've bought some 50mm insulation sheet and I'll start on my cold and warm rooms this weekend. I want to build a warm room (20 degrees) to hold 2 x 210 litre fermenters and 1500 litres in bottles and pins. My cold area (7 degrees) will hold 2 x 210 litre bright tanks and 800 litres in bottles and pins. I'm going to experiment with upright freezers pointing into the rooms, greenhouse heaters and STC1000's in the hope that they'll keep the temperatures in range. With a Scottish winter coming up, I'm hopeful that this will work.

My beer calendar will be:
One week in a fermenter at 20 degrees
One week in a bright tank at 7 degrees
three weeks conditioning at 20 degrees
one week stored at 7 degrees

I'll post some pics as soon as I've made appreciable progress. I've been slowly working at it, but my job gets in the way. Hopefully, I'll be brewing in the next month or two.

Sorry if I've gotten this the wrong but am I correct in thinking you've never brewed before? From the questions which you've been asking it seems there are a few major gaps in your knowledge if you aren't new to brewing(not knocking you there, everyone was a learner once).

In any case, there is absolutely no point in setting a fermentation schedule before you have made beer on that scale. Different shaped fermenters create different flavours, different sized fermenters change temperature at different rates so you might find that you need to set it lower to achieve the same flavours. Also, different temperatures give different flavour profiles which is worth bearing in mind and you may find that its easier to produce consistent beer at a given temperature than at others. Also different yeast perform differently at different temperature (i dont mean ale/lager but quite literally US05 operates differently to S04)

Further more, if you're going to use a bright tank, you could consider blending, ie you fill the bright tank and then you only ever half empty it and top up with more freshly fermented beer, this reduces wide fluctuations in flavour which you're bound to get at this size.

You might have known all that, then again you might not Just food for thought.

[Horatio]

My cold room is cooled by a portable air con unit and it does a great job. I usually have around 350l fermenting in there and switched to the air con unit this summer. I tried the freezer option but it didn't work for me. Hopefully you will have a better result than me! I've been brewing commercially for 10 months now and am currently working on an expansion plan to meet demand; I'd almost garantee you will want to expand sooner than you think too!

Good luck with the brewery and I wish you every success!

[dloper]

darkonnis, I've been brewing on a 25 litre scale for around 30 years, but without temperature control. My plan is to multiply by a factor of 8, to 200 litres per brew with repeatable results. To break down my brewing calender:

One week in a fermenter at 20 degrees - I've generally reached my FG in less than a week, and I expect a constant 20 degrees will reach my FG in less than a week. A day or two sitting on the yeast won't do any harm, and will probably help clean up the brew.

One week in a bright tank at 7 degrees - after fermentation, I'll rack the brew into a bright tank in the cold room, fine it, to allow the beer to clear.

Three weeks conditioning at 20 degrees - After clearing, the beer will be primed, bottled or casked and allowed to sit for three weeks.

One week stored at 7 degrees - After this point, I'll consider the beer fit for sale and consumption.

Maybe I was a bit economical with my description of my beer calender but I'm not sure what questions I asked that made me sound like a novice? If there's anything in my plan that raises an eyebrow, it would be helpful to hear your opinion.

[dloper]

Horatio, what temperature can your air con unit cool to - bearing in mind the outside air temperature? What volumes of beer were you trying to chill with a freezer and was that volume contained in an insulated space? What temperature were you hoping to achieve?

By the way - pleased to hear demand is working well!

[Horatio]

I have an insulated fermenting room that measures approximately 7x4 feet. I brew one firkin at a time and brew 7 times a week over three days so there is usually 7 FVs in there at a time. I can get the room temp down to 17c and the product temp sits at about 19.5c; larger FVs would probably generate more heat. I maintained that temp during the really hit spell recently too. When I tried the freezer I had a chest freezer and placed a large fan in the open top to blow cold air around, it didn't work very well and the freezer died after about a month! It may just have been a dodgy freezer though?

I couldn't be happier with the way things are going at the moment! I'm I the process of upgrading to a 3BBL kit in new premises. I have two contracts to brew house ale for two local pubs so hope to be shifting 30 firkins a week. It's bloody hard work the way I brew at the moment but still enjoyable!

Hope everything goes well for you too. Good luck and don't look back!

[oz11]

I couldn't be happier with the way things are going at the moment! I'm I the process of upgrading to a 3BBL kit in new premises. I have two contracts to brew house ale for two local pubs so hope to be shifting 30 firkins a week. It's bloody hard work the way I brew at the moment but still enjoyable!

I can't help but think before too long you're going to be wishing you had an even bigger brewery, knocking out 30 a week from a 3BBL brewery. It's a bit more effort to get up to a 10BBL plant but then you only need brew once a week for those 30 as opposed to 3 times a week on the 3BBL kit. It then frees up an extra two days a week (one extra day if you push through 2 brews on a day on the smaller kit) for the less interesting but necessary stuff like paperwork and cask washing

Our nearest brewing neighbours bought a 4 BBL kit earlier this year and I know they are already at max. capacity and need to expand.

[Horatio]

Yeah I know where you are coming from! The 30 a week is made up of three different beers. One brew is going to be split 8/4 between the two locals for house ale; fortunately they want the same beer! The rest will be two different beers to give me variety on my core range. I plan to to brew three times a week with the house beer being brewed every week and four different beers alternating two a week. If that makes sense! Lol

I would go bigger but I am on a tight budget so need to upgrade in stages. If this works then I will upgrade to 10BBL if there is the demand and the finances for it. I don't want to get seriously in debt... Yet!

[darkonnis]

No merely how quickly you'd seem to have set everything out before its up and running. It's what a lot of new guys appear to do without actually having the kit and seeing the practicalities of it

Can I offer a suggestion, I appreciate this is on a budget but if you can, buy a bigger HLT, you want to be able to heat all the water in one go. For a 200L output you'll need what, 300L? I had a quick scan through to refresh myself so forgive me if you've taken this in to account. But if you do one lot of heating, you can set the HLT on a timer and have it ready to go for when you wake up/get home from work. If that isn't an option you could also "overheat" the HLT to say 80 or 90c then with a bit of experience when you get going mix in some cold so your HLT is up to temp for the sparge. Pretty much from the get go.

Horatio has made some good points about size and again, I appreciate, there is a budget. You could consider introducing a tank between the mash tun and the boiler as a holding vessel, then you could effectively brew one batch after another. just some ideas, I'm supping a way at the minute so they may not be my best