What Equipment Do I Need In Beverage Production?

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Introduction

Food and Beverage industry is one of the most popular industries. There is never a scarcity of choices in the market for beverages because it is a necessity and humans love and enjoy drinking them. It is, for this reason, every year some companies and brands join the beverage industry and come up with a new variety, taste, mixture of ingredients, and flavor for their customers. If you are planning to enter the industry and introduce your brand in the market, you must do your research thoroughly because it is extremely important. Many new entrants start by investing heavily in the equipment for the beverage production and this is where they often go wrong. Having your brewing equipment has its advantage but often it comes up with high costs. Even some basic equipment can cost you millions of dollars because the equipment produced is usually of high quality and is extremely specialized. Therefore, the equipment should be owned considering the type of beverage company you are operating and what stage you are currently at. If you are an already established and successful brand in the industry, and having the equipment is crucial for your business operations then in this article we will help you to find out what equipment is necessary to purchase.

Types of Bottling Equipment

In terms of bottling, you might need two types of equipment:

Semi- Automatic

For the companies that have just started their business and their target market is small, limited and only regional, semi- automatic equipment is ideal for them to purchase. This includes machines for capping and labeling, rinsing bottles, and filling. If you have less space for production then purchasing tabletop machinery may be a good idea. For a basic bottling line, you may need labelers, cappers, and tabletop fillers that could be run by one or more than one operator. You can create a packaging line for your product by having the filling system that is uni-framed. This kind of system includes an automatic machine that does the filling and you can add on other types of machinery to the frame as per your choice. Usually, the uni-frame machine systems in the beverage industry come up with capers, labelers, and bottle rinsing and cleaning machines. The best part about having semi-automatic bottling equipment is that you can simply and easily upgrade it in the future to the automatic equipment as per the needs of the changing market conditions and growth of the business.

Automatic

As the company grows, at one point or the other you would need to purchase automatic bottling equipment which would include a bottle cleaning machine that is completely automatic. These machines usually have a vacuum in them and they help to clean the bottles before the beverage is poured in them. They do this by inverting the bottle over a basin to remove debris and all kinds of pollutants to make sure the bottle is clean. The Health of the consumer is extremely important that is why it has to be cleaned properly to ensure it is safe to drink. These machines also use a special kind of nozzle to lose out the debris first and then the vacuum is used to suck out the waste particles. These automatic bottle cleaners use PLC that can simply be operated with a touch.

After cleaning the bottle the next step is to fill liquid in it. Some of the automatic filling machines that can be purchased include for example gravity fillers and overflow fillers. Overflow fillers are capable of handling the foaming that can occur in some specific drinks whereas gravity fillers are easy simple and time-based fillers that can help to fill up the bottle to a consistent level without any hassle. Automatic filling machines also use PLC like rinsing machines and are capable of handling different record times, delays and durations for some particular bottles.

Once the bottles are filled you need to seal them. For this, you can purchase automatic capping machines that can automatically do the sealing without any difficulty. To preserve the color, taste and to increase the shelf life of the beverage many companies use nitrogen pure systems before capping and sealing. The capping systems include cap delivery systems that constantly cap the bottles automatically when the bottles move to the packaging. Some popular capping machines in the beverage industry include ROPP caps, snap caps, spindle cappers, and chuck cappers.

The next step after capping is labeling. Many beverages that have wrap labels use automatic labeling machinery that is sensitive to the pressure. The type of the labeling done depends greatly on the kind of bottle being used and how the bottler wishes to label it. These machines also have a coding function to print out the batch number, expiry date, and other important information. Once the labeling is done the bottle is ready to be taken to the shelf and exposed to the customer.

Conclusion

The above-mentioned information helps us to learn about the important types and kinds of equipment that are required if you are an already established brand in the beverage industry. However, if you are a new entrant, buying the equipment may not be a good idea. It is better and advisable to outsource the equipment because as mentioned above, the equipment is extremely costly and you can save this money for doing other important thing such as improving your product, doing market research, and learning about competitors. Outsourcing is cheaper and does not compromise on the quality of the equipment provided. This will also reduce the hassle of buying trucks, machines, and other pieces of equipment as the outsourcing companies will provide you everything for a fee that is easy to manage and is hassle-free. For a new entrant, outsourcing reduces the risk and the capital that is required to enter into the business so even if you do not sell much your investment in the business is limited to a minimum quantity.

 

 

 

YoLong 5hL Unitanks Delivery

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We finished a delivery of eight 5hL Unitanks today. Awesome feeling.

The client wanted to add eight 500L Unitanks for his brewery. Once we finished the initial drawing of his work station, we found out from one of the pictures he sent us that the fermenter we draw was taller and slimmer than the fermenters shown in the picture!  Therefore we had to go back to our drawing table and re design it.
We love working alongside our clients to provide the best solutions. Of course our client was happy as well to see our eye for details and our effort to provide the most suitable brewing equipment.

Also, we installed a spiral device on the sample valve to reduce beer foam when pouring the beer into a cup.

The Butterfly valves with Union connection make the vessel look pretty nice 🙂

Every engineer in YoLong has experience in brewing. This is very important to us when we design projects to be convenient to operate and cost-effective.

Contact us if you’re thinking about expanding your brewery capacity or interested in a new set up.

How to Make Beer Bread?

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Beer bread is very delicious indeed. The texture of the beer bread is soft, and the aroma of the beer is very rich. With the wheat flavor of the flour, the flavor is unique. Beer bread is fermented by direct method. It is not necessary to prepare the starter one night in advance, which is short-lived and suitable for friends who do not have enough time or forgot about their previous plans. Today we’ll teach you how to make beer bread (and we’re hoping you’ll like it).

Raw material

Feel free to use measuring spoon & cup

  • High-gluten flour 383g
  • Whole wheat flour 28g
  • Sugar 14g
  • Salt 8g (fine salt is best halved)
  • Beer 255g
  • Quick-drying yeast 4g

Beer Bread Practice

  1. Knead into dough: In addition to salt and flour, all other ingredients should be mixed and stirred at a low speed for 1 minute with a blender until the flour is sufficiently wet and roughly shaped. Put the dough in the bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it stand for 20 minutes. Sprinkle the salt and stir with a blender for additional 7 minutes at medium speed. If the dough can’t get out of the tank wall add some flour. The final dough will be very smooth and elastic. If it is still very sticky add a little flour . If the dough is too hard add some water until it’s softer.
  2. Fermentation: Pour oil into the container, put in the dough and seal the plastic wrap.
    Wait until the dough is fermented (2 times the normal height). It takes about 1.5-2 hours (ideal temperature is 24-27 °C).
  3. Shaping: The dough is buckled on a workbench with a little flour, gently flattened, rolled into a ball or shaped into other shapes.
  4. Last fermentation: Fermentation until the volume is almost doubled. It will take about 1-1.5 hours. After the fermentation is complete, gently press the dough with your fingertips.
  5. Oven preheating: Preheat the oven to 232 °C 1 hour in advance – This step should be carried out simultaneously at the end of the fermentation.
  6. Final: Powdering and dicing the fermented dough.
  7. Baking: Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, then drop the temperature to 204 ° C and continue to bake for 30-40 minutes until the bread turns golden brown.
  8. Cooling: The baked bread should be left to cool for a while and then sliced. Warning: It’s very hot so don’t touch with bare hands.

Tips

  1. This bread requires the use of slate (accumulated heat) and baking stones (making steam).
  2. The sugar in the raw materials can be replaced with saccharified malt powder or maltose syrup with the same amount = 1 tbp.
  3. Beer has foam in it so the volume is difficult to measure. Therefore it’s the best to use the weighing method for measurement.
  4. Because the dark beer is darker (duh!), adding honey will make the color deeper.
  5. Choose home craft beer. Those are the best 🙂

 

The dough ingredients of this recipe:

  • Flour 100% (high-gluten flour 92.7%, whole wheat flour 7.3%)
  • Water 57.2%
  • Yeast 1%
  • Salt 2%

Congrats! The beer bread is ready, and you’ll have something nice to eat today. Finally! 😉

10 Great Tips to Optimize Dry Hop Bouquet

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Longing for your IPA and the heady bouquet of pale ale?
Enjoy the sensation that your nose is full of it?
Want to make the alchemist’s lintopper dry drop in your own beer?
Here are 10 things that, if done, will add to your bouquet.

1. Use granulated hops

According to research by Peter Wolfe (Oregon state university) and Mitch Steele (Stone Brewing), hop-grain is the most widely used dry thrower in the United States.While some brewers are still debating whether grains are good or not, there’s no denying the fact that particle hops extract faster and better than dried ones.

2. Consider multiple varieties

Like salt and pepper, different varieties of hops should work together. Whether it’s Simcoe and Amarillo, Citra and Centennial, Chinook and Cascade, or Nelson Sauvin and Columbus, two or more hops can give your beer a better depth. In fact, you’ll find that you have to find a balance between multiple hops, or some of them will overwrite other features.

3. Use multistage dry throws

According to Steele, Vinnie Cilurzo (Russian river winery), Matt Brynildson (firestone walker winery) and Jamil Zainasheff (Heretic winery), multi-stage dry drop hops will add greater depth to your beer.

Raised to the scale of commercial production, the need for multistage dry drop is straightforward: the shape of the cylindrical fermentation tank results in very small areas of contact between hops and liquid at the bottom of the tank. Wolfe doesn’t believe the technology can be of much benefit to home-brewed beer, as many fermenters use flat pans. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve noticed some obvious differences between what I’m doing with first-level dry throws and what I’m doing with multiple-level dry throws.

4. Take advantage of higher temperatures

The higher the drying temperature, the better the aroma.In “For The Love of Hops,” author Stan Hieronymus reports on dry Hops temperatures at commercial breweries: Stone at 16.7 degrees, Lagunitas at 21.1 degrees, new Belgium at 12.2 degrees, and sierra Nevada at 20 degrees.

Even breweries, like Jack’s Abby, raise the temperature to 13 degrees during dry spells. For me, I find it easiest to dry drop hops at ambient fermentation temperatures (18.9-20 degrees).

5. Optimize soaking time

Many commercial breweries have the ability to awaken hops, keeping them suspended in the liquid by means of hops or torpedo-like equipment. According to Wolfe, unawakened hops particles will only reach 3/4 of the aroma intensity of awakened hops (a peak of 4 days).

6. In the main fermentation dry cast

Most breweries dry drop hops after the main fermentation to prevent the yeast from absorbing the hops flavor and passing the flavor to the yeast used in subsequent batches. Some breweries have publicly ignored this dogma, dry-throwing hops at the end of the main fermentation. Lagunitas, new Belgium,  sierra Nevada and firestone walkers do some (all) of the dry throwing of hops before reaching the finishing point.

Some brewery likes this approach because it takes advantage of the interaction between yeast and hops, reducing the oxidation of hops with the beer itself due to still-active yeasts.

7. Minimize oxidation

As any experienced brewer knows, minimizing oxygen uptake after fermentation is critical.For dry throw hops beer, this is essential! No matter how good your technique, it is essential to introduce oxygen during the cupping process.Reducing the total number of mature containers (secondary fermenters, kegs and bottles) is an easy way to reduce oxygen uptake.A better approach is to use the pond to purify all your equipment before transferring.

8. Use post casting/cyclotron precipitation

The study by Van Havig of Rock Bottom revealed that the post-drop hops/cyclothem precipitation may be more effective than the dry drop in achieving a high level of hops aroma. First, his data showed that longer boiling followed by the addition of hops (cycloprecipitation) led to more hops flavor, aroma and perceived bitterness. Second, longer boiling resists more hops flavor than dry throwing alone, so beer flavors are best developed in a boiling pot.

9. Understand the law of diminishing returns

The aroma of dried hops does not increase exponentially with the addition of more hops. In fact, Having shows that brewers can reach a point of diminishing returns by dribbling hops.

Many commercial distilleries report dry throw efficiencies of between 0.25 and 1.5 ounces per gallon (0.5 to 3 pounds per barrel), such as Stone, Lagunitas and new Belgium, which average 0.5 ounces per gallon (lb/BBL).

It was a clear good start, but in fact I found it.1.5oz/gallon is the best standard for my American IPAs.

10. Use your experience well

Preliminary results showed that the Double IPAs used 0.78 ounces per gallon for 11 days, the IPA used 0.48 ounces per gallon for 9 days, and the black IPA averaged 0.4 ounces per gallon for 12 days.

With the above methods in place, you can create a delicious beer bouquet.
We are professional beer brewing equipment manufacturer from China. For more tips and ideas on how to get your dry hop bouquet even better contact our experts today. We’d love to assist you!