Lesson 6 - Wort Clarification, Cooling and Oxygenation Final SAQ
This lesson allows you to test yourself on the material covered in all previous lessons on Wort Clarification, Cooling and Oxygenation, and determine the level to which you have attained the outcomes.
Suggested Response - Q3
***Your new brewery is going to be space constrained. Discuss the options open to you, to maximise wort clarification and cooling efficiencies, yet minimise floor space requirements (footprint).
Response:
This is a common reality that brewers are faced with nowadays, particularly considering current prices for commercial property space!
Wort clarification and cooling equipment can include the use of coolships, sedimentation tanks, whirlpools, centrifuges, hop jacks, hop backs, hop strainers, shell and tube, or plate heat exchangers and their associated oxygen dosing system. A typical arrangement of these processes is sequential. They therefore require a significant amount of floor space. For example, the use of a whirlpool could then be followed be a centrifuge, and then by a plate heat exchanger and its oxygen dosing system.
The whirlpool follows the wort kettle. There is thus a possibility of using an external wort boiler in conjunction with a kettle-whirlpool. This is particularly useful if our brewery requires two wort kettles, as the boiler can then service both vessels. Because we would be using two kettle-whirlpools and not need a holding vessel, this design also saves space.
The benefit of using centrifuges is that they only take up a small footprint. We could use them in series and/or in parallel. They have high power requirements and also require additional noise and safety systems and procedures. However, floor space is currently the main problem that we need to solve.
We would need to check the brand requirements to be aware of the type and amount of hop usage, in addition to clarity requirements. This will ensure that there is no compromise on brand recipes or product quality.
We would choose a plate heat exchanger for the wort cooling, as they are more flexible and efficient per square meter than the shell and tube heat exchangers. We would use water and a secondary coolant to cool the wort, as this can save on an additional chiller, to reduce the water to lower temperatures.
We may look at the use of compressed air to aerate the wort. This can form a simple and relatively smaller floor area than if installing oxygen cylinders close to the wort aeration station.