Page 20 - Beverage Master_AprMay2022

Craft Brewery
atively simple, while others like Hazy IPAs or sour
beers will need a double filtration. Vail also recom- and market shifts, like the boom in seltzer produc-
mends sampling the beer at the brite tank, at the
time of filling kegs and after bottling and canning.
The more sampling done, the better and more
informed a brewmaster’s knowledge of that beer
becomes.
“Most craft brewers don’t have a Quality Control
lab, and if they do, it is usually small, with maybe
chemical testing and yeast titers conducted,” said
Vail. “Don’t be afraid to do more quality control
testing. It’s all data, and the more data you get,
the more consistent you can be when making beer.
This type of data is helpful no matter what type or
style of beer you want to produce. Ensuring that
all microorganisms are out of the equipment setup
before beginning a new brewing cycle provides the
consistently best batch of beer possible. Testing
leads to education, and with increased education,
the importance of raw material and process testing
becomes more forefront in the brewing process,
with the overall impact being consistent, high-qual- certain timelines, all while retaining their product’s
ity beer.”
For chemical and microbiological testing, there
are several resources that brewers can use, such as
the American Society of Brewing Chemists and The
Brewers Association.
More automation, Better Materials
and More Education
“More automation will become evident in brew-
eries as time progresses,” said Garafola. “The same
holds for filtration systems and devices. We’re
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always looking to improve based on brewers’ needs
tion. As a brewer, you should look towards flexibil-
ity in the available products, considering pore size,
ease of regeneration and operation, and how the
product will react to and work with any possible
future automation and expansion plans.”
Sartorius has been building automated filtration
skids for over 20 years. Garafola said they offer
manual, semi-automated and fully automated fil-
tration systems with a parallel design. The parallel
design systems automatically switch to a second
line while simultaneously starting the regeneration
process of the primary line, increasing the life of
the filters and naturally minimizing the need to pur-
chase replacements continually.
“Brewers should always be open to learning about
filtration upgrades and solutions to any issues
they’re having,” said Vail. “By partnering with your
filtration professional, problems can get solved with
a thorough understanding of why they occurred
so that they can be avoided in future production.
We can assist with testing brewer’s products, and
Sartorius always recommends performing a small
and intermediate scale to ensure their full scale will
work. We have small-scale filter capsules to test
beer throughput and estimate scale-up filter sizes
based on a brewer’s batch. We get easy-to-use
data to scale up in the future knowing the capacity
based on your previous small-scale runs.”
“It’s important to note,” said Garafola, “that in
many cases, quality, right-sized filtration not only
helps extend the shelf-life of the final product by
removing any potential spoilage organisms. It can
actually allow a brewer to increase the number
of batches that they can complete by shortening
organoleptic properties.”
3/25/22 1:25 PM