While we often think of brewing as a hands on, personal process the fact is that automation that is,the use of software and hardware now performs many of the processes otherwise performed by humans in the past. Since the early days of the Industrial Revolution, brewers have sought to reduce manual labor and focus brewers’ attentions on beer quality. Today, even relatively small breweries and brewpubs (and the occasional zealous homebrewer) may employ automated processes. The primary benefit of automation is that it makes the most brewery operations “hands free” and thus renders the operator able to tend to other items. Other benefits include consistency, because automation excludes errors unique to humans, such as forgetfulness or variation between different operators. Automation programs are written to simulate what the brewer had previously performed manually. For automation to be possible, many types of sensors are required to successfully replicate what can be performed manually by a person. Such sensors include empty pipe detection for knowing when a pump has emptied a vessel, pressure sensors for monitoring lauter cake differential pressures and head pressure, pressure transducers for converting a pressure into a level of a vessel, and temperature sensors (there are many different types of sensors for each process). Very critical to automation is a proportional, integral, derivative controller (PID controller). Typical processes in a brewhouse that utilize PID controllers are the steam valves for making hot water and boiling wort, the lauter speed control and differential pressure control of lautering speed and efficiency, and the wort cooling valve, which controls the flow of ice water through a heat exchanger to cool hot wort into a fermenter. Depending on the budget for and applications within a brewhouse, there may be many other uses for PID controllers such as yeast pitching and turbidity meters or other instrumentation. For many experienced brewers, a transition to automated systems is jarring, but necessary. Once the automated programs are optimized and all functions are satisfactory, the desired operations will be executed the same way every time. Well- designed systems are highly flexible and allow brewers to make changes when necessary and to program new recipes easily. . |
Automation in Brewing |
A new column by Jack O'Reilly |
Jack O'Reilly attended the Siebel Institute/ World Brewing Academy |
I'm very excited to be part of the BeerNexus team. I think my many years in the beer business both as a brewer and manger will enable me to explain and investigate many topics of interest for those who really love craft beer. Hope you join me every month. Cheers! Jack |