Commercial Brewing Equipment and Understanding Cold Side

We continue brewing by moving into the heat exchanger. There are many different types of commercial heat exchangers with a wide range of applications. In commercial brewing, the most common is the plate and frame heat exchanger. This uses a series of stainless steel plates and rubber gaskets to create a lot of heat transfer surface area in a very compact package. The plates and gaskets are arranged in a very specific way so that the cooling media never touches the wort and so that the liquids flow in opposite directions through the heat exchanger to provide the most efficient heat transfer. The output of the heat exchanger is also usually the location where in-line aeration/oxygenation setups are assembled for the most effective oxygen uptake by the wort after it has been cooled and before yeast is pitched.

From there, we move into the cold side of brewing and equipment.

Fermentation Tanks

Fermenters (fermentation vessels, fermentation tanks, FV’s, FM’s, etc) are where yeast cells convert the sugars in the wort into alcohol and carbon dioxide via alcoholic fermentation. This turns the wort into beer. Modern beer fermenters have a conical bottom and are often somewhere between 1.5x and 4x taller than they are wide — known as the tank ratio.

These features are important for a few reasons. The tank ratio can affect how much hydrostatic pressure the yeast experience during fermentation which can directly impact ester formation during fermentation.

Short, wide vessels create less hydrostatic pressure, which allows more ester development. Taller, skinnier vessels create more hydrostatic pressure, limiting ester production. Whether the vessel is taller or shorter, a 60-degree conical bottom is almost always the preferred choice for fermenters. The conical bottom allows yeast, hop sediment, and proteins that have settled toward the bottom of the tank during fermentation to be easily drained off and harvested after primary fermentation.

Breweries use a glycol chiller to control temperatures during fermentation. Because of this, most fermenters are outfitted with a glycol jacket that surrounds the tank. This adds a layer of insulation to reduce heat loss around the jacketing.

The alternative to this would be to purchase a tank without insulation or jacketing and then store fermenters in a temperature-controlled room set at the appropriate temperature for your fermentation. But fermentation creates heat. And in a brewery with multiple fermentation processes happening at once, setting a temperature in a room-controlled room that would be optimal for different stages of fermentation is quite the task. Controlling the temperature inside of a single tank using glycol jacketing, instead of controlling the temperature within a room, is a much more controlled process that leads to more predictable results for each unique fermentation. Therefore, jacketed and insulated fermenters are the industry standard for brewing.

Glacier Tanks sells both jacketed/insulated fermenters and non-jacketed fermenters. Both types have conical bottoms as our standard option. All of our fermenters have been designed at a similar tank ratio, so the tank ratio can remain consistent as your brewery grows and gets larger. As an added bonus, our proprietary Glacier Arm racking system comes standard on all of our fermenters. No more loosening tri-clamps. No more risk of leaking, beer loss, or unnecessary insurance bills due to easily avoidable cellar mishaps. No more turning DIN fittings and having them tighten in one direction and loosen in the other. We’ve created a like-no-other racking arm that is unparalleled in the beer industry that helps brewers stay safer, and brewery owners experience less loss.

Brite/Bright Tanks

After fermentation, the final step (prior to packaging) is conditioning. This can be done in a fermenter but is often performed in a brite tank. Brite tanks are pressure-capable vessels that serve to “brighten” the beer. They allow for any additional settling of dissolved solids and are the vessel for the carbonation of the beer before packaging. For these purposes, brite tanks should be manufactured with glycol cooling jackets so that they are ready to plumb into your glycol system, and they should be insulated to reduce heat loss during conditioning.

Glacier Tanks brite tanks are insulated and jacketed for glycol, ready to plug and play into your cellar. If needed, we can equip a Glacier Arm onto our brite tanks for unique circumstances in your process. Otherwise, our standard brite tanks are excellent additions to your cellar and will keep your product cold, conditioned, and ready to drink.

Additional Equipment (for both sides)

Though not mandatory, much of the additional equipment listed below is a benefit to brewers and breweries in both the hot and cold sides.

Glycol chiller is something to consider when looking at purchases of the cold side. Glycol units are refrigerant recirculation systems that provide efficient cooling for your cellar tanks. Glycol chillers should be sized based on your current cellar tanks and knockout procedures. They should also take growth into account, though, so that your business demand doesn’t outpace your glycol chilling capacity within the next two years of operation.

Hot liquor tank (HLT) is a piece of “hot side” brewing equipment that provides hot water for the brewing process. Smaller operations can survive with “on-demand” hot water systems, which are electric or natural gas hot water heaters daisy-chained together to get water heated to mash temperatures. Water can be pulled between heaters for partially heated water — though this can create a heating bottleneck. A well-designed HLT should hold sufficient insulation to reduce heat loss at all times. This is especially true during hot water recovery.

Cold liquor tanks (CLT) are less common than hot liquor tanks, but they deserve an honorable mention. CLTs are used in areas with warmer groundwater. They can be a great advantage in a lot of breweries that rely on very cold water in their cooling stages or without or with an undersized glycol unit. A CLT can be as simple as a brite tank that has been repurposed to only chill water or can become a specially designed commercial cold liquor tank with additional insulation and recirculation loops built in. At Glacier Tanks, we’ve designed both, and we advocate for both.