Lesson 5 - Wort Cooling and Oxygenation Technology and Process Control SAQ
This lesson provides the opportunity for you to test yourself on the material covered in Lesson 4 (Wort Cooling and Oxygenation Technology and Process Control) and determine the level to which you have attained the expected outcomes.
Suggested Response - Q5
**Your brewery has to reduce the duration of wort cooling to better suit the new cycle times and productivity requirements. How will you achieve this? What will you change?
Response:
This can be difficult if we already have a pre-designed wort cooler to match current brands and cycle times. However, if we have a plate heat exchanger this is more easily achievable than if we had a shell and tube heat exchanger, as we can simply add more plates.
We can increase the flow rate of the wort through the wort cooler, although this would increase the wort collection temperature. We would thus either have to increase the number of plates in the PHE, or lower the cooling water temperature by adding additional refrigeration to produce the chilled water. Another option would be to add an additional cooling stage to the PHE.
We can also consider the different beer style requirements. If we brew more ales for example, we can use higher cooling temperatures and in effect speed up the cooling process. If we use high gravity brewing, we can also in essence achieve more volume per brew. We can even dilute this wort after the wort cooler, if necessary, to keep the size of the wort cooler small and fast.