Brewing Hot Water

The Client's problem was that there were two Start-Up and End phases per week when the Brewhouse went from empty to full and back again. During the Start Phase phases the Brewing Water system was running out of Hot Brewing Water before any Wort was ready to be cooled leading to Brewing delays while cold water was brought in and heated. During the End phase there was not enough room to recover all the hot Water produced by Wort Cooling leading to Hot Water being sent to drain wasting both water and energy.
To mitigate these effects an operator or engineer was spending all day in front of the control unit manually balancing water use.
The Client had undertaken consultancy work and received quotations for increased hot water storage capacity at an estimated cost of £110,000 - for which there was no budget.

I was asked to revisit the issue before the money was requested. It was quickly evident that a skilled operator could anticipate water demand and return Start and End phases. Hence the control system should in theory be also able to do this. After a study, recommendations were proposed which were accepted and implemented: - Refurbishment of existing Heat Exchangers - Start and End Phase level profiles encoded in software
Net result: - Project cost £10,000 - Brewing Hot Water supply and return demands satisfied - Two man-days per week of manual operation requirement removed
Recommendations made for future Brewhouse control system upgrade to allow heat recovery from Wort Cooling to be optimised and excess Hot Water diverted to General Hot Water system.

Brewing Water System

The Brewing Water system supplies Hot Water ("Hot Liquor" in brewing terms) for the Mashing and Lautering/Filtration processes in the Brewhouse. Most if not all modern breweries reclaim heat from the Boiling process when the hot Wort from Boiling is cooled on its way to fermentation vessels.