Craft beer at 2 vessels brewhouse &mash system hot sell in USA

What Equipment Do I Need to Start a Brewery?

Hot Water Tank

The hot water tank stores the hot water used for “mashing in”. Mashing in is where you mix hot water and malt to make a porridge that will convert the starch in the malt to sugar. The hot water tank will be a minimum of two times the volume of your brewhouse.

Malt Mill

A malt mill is for crushing the malt to be able to access the starch in the grain so it can be converted to sugar in the mash. They are simple devices with rollers that crush the malt as it passes through.

Heat Exchanger

A heat exchanger is where you cool down the wort from 100C to 12-25C from the whirlpool or kettle to the fermentation vessels. This allows you to add the yeast for the fermentation. As you can see below it is a small bit of kit but is very important to the brewery.

Heating System

When brewing you need a lot of hot water and to be able to boil the wort in the kettle. This means you need a heating system. The option is electric or steam. For a larger brewery anything over 7HL steam is always the better option.

Steam is cheaper and also gives a more even heat source. With electric you can caramelize the wort close to the heating elements which isn’t a good thing in most instances.

Fermentation Vessels

Fermentation vessels (FV) are the tanks where you ferment the beer. These days most breweries have uni-tanks. These tanks are for the fermentation and maturation of the beer.

You ferment the beer, then cool it to drop the yeast to the bottom of the tank. Then dump or save the excess yeast for the next brew.

Bright Beer Tanks (BBT’s)

A brighter beer tank is for the clear beer to be sent to after fermentation. It’s the tank where you package the beer from. You can clear the beer a number of ways from fining, filtering or with a centrifuge.

Glycol System for Beer Cooling

When you brew beer, temperatures are very important. The way you control temperature is with a glycol system. This is a tank of cold glycol that has its own pipe work to pump cold glycol (around -3 to 4C) to where it is needed.

So, for example FV’s have a “false Jacket” they have an inner tank wall and a cavity that has houses insulation and also glycol pipework.

The glycol goes through this pipework and can cool the FV down when it gets hotter during fermentation. The glycol doesn’t come into contact with the beer as it is inside the glycol pipework between the FV inner and outer walls.

Cold Water Tank

The water from a cold-water tank is used by the heat exchanger to cool the wort down on the way to the FV’s. The reason I put it last of the main equipment list is because it is optional. It’ss possible to use city water and your glycol system instead.

It takes pressure of your glycol system somewhat and also from cold water you make hot water after the heat exchanger. This gives you water to clean and for the second brew of a double brew day.

Keg Cleaner

Most breweries need a keg cleaner. They can semi-automatically clean kegs saving you time. The more actions you need them to do the more they cost. Under normal circumstances, we will equip customers with CIP cleaning car, which have wheels that can move anywhere.