Differences in commercial brew process vs. homebrew??

Does anyone know what the biggest differences are in the brewing process between large commercial breweries and small scale homebrew setups?

Besides the obvious like size, technology, mass production, what are some of the best techniques/pieces of equipment/procedures that the big boys utilize that we can to?

Im always looking for ways to increase my efficiency, time of brewday, and other things to make my beer better and more professional. Any thoughts?

Note when I say 'large' I actually mean 'micro'. But larger than could be called homebrewing.

Large breweries do not leave the beer in the primary fermenter for a month like homebrewers. It's there just long enough to hit final gravity then goes to a 'bright tank' (secondary) for refrigerated aging.

Large breweries filter their beer.

Large breweries reuse their yeast.

Large breweries typically fly sparge and continuously stir the mash.

Large breweries do not dry hop for weeks. They are more likely to use hopback-like devices and/or recirculate while dry hopping for a couple days.

bluelakebrewing said:

Does anyone know what the biggest differences are in the brewing process between large commercial breweries and small scale homebrew setups?

Besides the obvious like size, technology, mass production, what are some of the best techniques/pieces of equipment/procedures that the big boys utilize that we can to?

Im always looking for ways to increase my efficiency, time of brewday, and other things to make my beer better and more professional. Any thoughts?

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The differences in time are not significant. The mashing, sparging and boiling processes take similar amounts of time whether brewing 10 gallons or 350 gallons. I recently assisted on a batch at a brewpub and the overall time from start to finish was about six hours. My home brewing time is slightly more than that due to the most part from having to set up and knock down the equipment and not using pumps.

As for improvements to the beer I think the most common shortcomings in homebrew, aside from bad recipes, is under-pitching of yeast and lack of critical temperature control. Equipment like commercial glycol-jacketed fermenters and tanks make temperature control a snap. Pitching large, active yeast cultures gets the fermentation going soon to a rapid, clean finish.

BetterSense said:

Note when I say 'large' I actually mean 'micro'. But larger than could be called homebrewing.

Large breweries do not leave the beer in the primary fermenter for a month like homebrewers. It's there just long enough to hit final gravity then goes to a 'bright tank' (secondary) for refrigerated aging.

Large breweries filter their beer.

Large breweries reuse their yeast.

Large breweries typically fly sparge and continuously stir the mash.

Large breweries do not dry hop for weeks. They are more likely to use hopback-like devices and/or recirculate while dry hopping for a couple days.

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homebrewers flysparge, can ferment for only critical junctures, and reuse their yeast continuously....im trying to get down to the nitty gritty of the actual differences.. things theyre doing that we arent/can only dream of. What are they

bluelakebrewing said:

homebrewers flysparge, can ferment for only critical junctures, and reuse their yeast continuously....im trying to get down to the nitty gritty of the actual differences.. things theyre doing that we arent/can only dream of. What are they

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As far as I can tell, there's no "magic" to commercial brewing. Brewing is brewing, and in some ways homebrewers have more and varied techniques available to them that just aren't practical on a commercial scale.

The key to commercial brewing is quality and consistency, which are accomplished by thorough control of the process (the afformentioned automated temperature control, pitching big healthy yeast cultures, etc etc.). Also, most commercial recipes have been tested and tweaked on a pilot (homebrew) scale before being applied to the full system, so the recipes are more polished.

Things that they're doing that we aren't? A crapton of cleaning. Enjoy the small rig

We can do everything they do, just on a smaller scale. Just sometimes it is not economically adventitious to do these things.

Can't believe no one has mentioned this yet! Commercial breweries almost always use unicorn blood in their batches. They usually add this when pitching the yeast in a ratio of about 1oz blood per 1 gallon of wort.

What sucks is that the distributors of the stuff won't even talk to you unless you are a bonded, licensed commercial brewery. That's probably the biggest difference.

I would say filtration and fermentation time would be the biggest differences.

It can be expensive to implement a filter at small scale. Plus it's not really needed if you cold crash, use finings, or do long cold storage. larger breweries have to be efficient in the amount of time they give to a batch of beer. Most fermentation cycles are only 5-10 days. At that time the beer is transferred to a bright or storage tank to free up the fermenter. Most homebrewers let their batches ferment for 3 or more weeks. Not that commercial brewers couldn't do that, but it cuts into production capacity.

I would say one of the advantages commercial breweries have is being able to brew multiple times per week. I'm lucky if I can brew every 2 weeks on average. There are so many variables I would like to play with but can't.

great thoughts everyone, thanks for your feedback. I guess im still curious about big brewery technologies like mash rakes, glycol systems, pid interfaces, fancy pumps and what have you, but....really it seems as though the same principles still apply. This is why I love brewing!

bluelakebrewing said:

great thoughts everyone, thanks for your feedback. I guess im still curious about big brewery technologies like mash rakes, glycol systems, pid interfaces, fancy pumps and what have you, but....really it seems as though the same principles still apply. This is why I love brewing!

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Mash rakes - stir your mash throughout.
Glycol Systems - more than possible on a homebrew scale, but probably easier and more economical to just re-purpose a fridge or freezer as a temp control chamber
PID Interfaces - check out the electric brewing forum...
Fancy Pumps - pumps are pumps, more or less. There are some variations in technology and power, but they're doing the same job in basically the same way whether you're moving 5 gallons or 500 gallons.

jhall4 said:

Mash rakes - stir your mash throughout.
Glycol Systems - more than possible on a homebrew scale, but probably easier and more economical to just re-purpose a fridge or freezer as a temp control chamber
PID Interfaces - check out the electric brewing forum...
Fancy Pumps - pumps are pumps, more or less. There are some variations in technology and power, but they're doing the same job in basically the same way whether you're moving 5 gallons or 500 gallons.

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I'm not sure I would consider any of these items "ways the commercial brewers make better beer". I think the biggest difference between commercial brewers and homebrewers is the fact that they have all the financial responsibilities of turning a profit.

They need to be able to balance profits with processes, techniques, and time frames that make the best beer. In this respect, I think homebrewers have a huge advantage - we can do what it takes to make the best beer without worrying so much about the bottom line.

mdgagne said:

I'm not sure I would consider any of these items "ways the commercial brewers make better beer". I think the biggest difference between commercial brewers and homebrewers is the fact that they have all the financial responsibilities of turning a profit.

They need to be able to balance profits with processes, techniques, and time frames that make the best beer. In this respect, I think homebrewers have a huge advantage - we can do what it takes to make the best beer without worrying so much about the bottom line.

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No doubt, just saying that all of the OP's concerns about things commercial brewers do, homebrewers can do too.

jhall4 said:

No doubt, just saying that all of the OP's concerns about things commercial brewers do, homebrewers can do too.

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Including watering down their beer if they feel so inclined. Lol

If we are going to include the megabreweries in the discussion, they ferment strong and water down. They ferment lagers under pressure at room temperature to obtain results similar to traditional lager fermentation in a fraction of the amount of time and space.

so basically everything these larger breweries are doing can be done on a smaller scale by a homebrewer? Doesnt seem like any of these techniques would be unacheivable by an amatuer zymurgist. Annnnnything we CANT do ??

BetterSense said:

Large breweries do not leave the beer in the primary fermenter for a month like homebrewers.

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Many homebrewers don't either....the real truth behind the "ferment for a month" rule is that is allows aging out of all of those nasty by-products of fermentation that result from uncontrolled fermentation temps.

Get fermentation control and you too can turn beers around in times similar to breweries.

bluelakebrewing said:

so basically everything these larger breweries are doing can be done on a smaller scale by a homebrewer? Doesnt seem like any of these techniques would be unacheivable by an amatuer zymurgist. Annnnnything we CANT do ??

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I can't think of any. Many microbreweries pilot produce beers on a homebrew setup then scale it up for full size production. If you can scale up, why can't you scale down?

Not sure how common it is, but some breweries mash and lauter in separate vessels. Frees up the MT for another batch, and allows for a more optimized design for each vessel. Multiple brews per day also makes heat recovery easier.

StMarcos said:

Not sure how common it is, but some breweries mash and lauter in separate vessels. Frees up the MT for another batch, and allows for a more optimized design for each vessel. Multiple brews per day also makes heat recovery easier.

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Interesting. So does this involve moving the entire mash to a seperate vessel, a lauter - tun for lautering?

Yup.

One of the higher tech systems now being offered is the HEBS (High Efficiency Brewing System) by IDD in CA.

They are making a four vessel system as small at 20 hl (17 bbl) using technology that used to be only available to 100 bbl and up brewhouses.

The mash filter is the most efficient system known today. With this system you can knock out a brew every two hours, so up to 12 brews a day.

For more information here is a link to a presentation about the system.

If you want to find out more about some higher tech brew systems, take a look at what Steinecker has to offer.

Braukon is also used by quite a few craft breweries.

Not just cool looking, but I like the idea as well! I wonder how they can get away with squeezing the mash in a bladder press. You'd think others would have already been using that idea if it didn't affect the flavour negatively. I can't figure out how the whirlpool works. I'm assuming it operates continuously as the wort leaves the press and travel to the boiler.

Wayne- that is simply spectacular thank you so much for sharing. Those are the types of things that really get me fired up to be a brewer. Sheer awesomeness. Just wow is all i can say besides "i want one!"

StMarcos said:

Not just cool looking, but I like the idea as well! I wonder how they can get away with squeezing the mash in a bladder press. You'd think others would have already been using that idea if it didn't affect the flavour negatively. I can't figure out how the whirlpool works. I'm assuming it operates continuously as the wort leaves the press and travel to the boiler.

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The mash filter has been around for decades. It used to require a MUCH larger scale to make it justify itself. Coors uses mash filters in the lines in Golden, but each line is 250 bbls.

Alaskan Brewing recently became the first craft brewer to buy one.

Meura has been making these for the larger systems for years. The IDD is the smallest use of a mash filter I have seen.

The whirlpool is the last step after the kettle. It is used to separate the solids (trub) from the wort. The wort is then run through the heat exchanger to the fermenters.

Tin Man Brewing in Evansville, IN was the first to use the HEBS system. I believe at least 4 more are in the process of getting them installed

What exactly does the mash filter do? It sounds like it mechancally separates the grain out of the wort, like BIAB, but does that mean they skip all sparging? I would expect that to reduce efficiency and efficiency is important to big breweries.

A Mash Filter increase efficiencies. You can get extract laboratory yields when using a mash filter. Typical lauter tun yields tend to be 5-10% less.

From Meura:

It opens up the possibility of brewing with a wide variety of raw materials in any amount. It is Belgian technology especially designed for Belgian beer styles!
as a matter of interest, nearly 90% of the beer volume produced in Belgium is produced with the Meura 2001 technology

It yields dry spent grains of 26-30% dry matter (lauter tun at 20% D.M.). This means cleaner operation with essentially dry matter handling versus liquid/matter removal of spent grains

It leads to water savings. The recovery of more wort and no false bottom rinsing represents a general savings of between 0.25 and 0.50 gal/gal (l/l).

It enables High Gravity brewing. Thanks to a thick mash at mashing in and reduced sparging (<2,3 l/kg or 0,28 gal/lbs) of the wort before boiling and with out adding sugar it will be > 16°P without extract losses. This represents a saving in energy and space and makes an ideal set-up for brewing specialty beer

It creates a very high quality wort, thanks to a brighter wort (<5ml/l Imhoff solids) than with a lauter tun. A reduced sparging water ratio with less leaching out of unwanted components is also achieved with the Meura 2001 Micro mash filter.

A hot trub volume that is approximately 30-50% lower is achieved because of
the bright wort.

There is lower hop consumption (ca. 5-15%) with a better yield due to the
lower hot trub content

From Malting and Brewing.com:

The advantages of the mash filter over the lauter tun
- higher capacity
- smaller building area needed
- higher extract yield
- easier to automate.
- ability to operate with very fine milled grist
- improved! reduce mash oxidation

Operation Description (Meura 2001 Mash Filter)
1. Filter Empty – the filter is emptied, closed and stand by for filling.
2. Filling of the filter – the filter is filled from the underside at constant flow rate.
3. Filtration – the filtration runs at constant flow rate.
4. Pre-compression – to reduce sparging water and more extract recovery.
5. Sparging – to efficient extract recovery.
6. Compression – to collect the last extract and dry the grains.
7. Drain down – to emptied residual water in the filter.
8. Spent grain discharge – the spent grain bed drops off from the filter, after spent grains discharged, the filter is closed automatically and is ready for the next brew.
9. Cleaning – by soaking the clothes in a caustic solution.

Is it much different than if I was to throw my spent mash in mesh cloth and then in my cider press? Doesn't the conventional wisdom say not to squeeze wort from the grains?

To add a bit more information about the Mash Filter/Press here is a quote from Curtis Holmes of Alaskan Brewing:

"There are mash filters and there are mash presses. Mash filters were invented in the late 1800&#8242;s by Meura out of Belgium. The original systems only filtered the finely ground grain and dumped the spent grain wet, they offered a slight efficiency over lauter tuns but not much. In 1991, Meura upgraded their mash filter design to a mash “press” where the grains now get squeezed at the end of filtration to remove any remaining sugars. This jumped up their efficiency and speed over the traditional mash filter design and gave even more advantages over lautering, namely that your spent grains now came out as a much dryer cake. Since Meura owns the rights to the mash press design, other manufacturers are still making mash filters.

So when talking about these units you have to watch the description to know what type of system they are. In the U.S. we’ve only recently found out that F.X. Matt and Yeungling’s brewery in Florida have one of these systems, but we’re trying to find out if they have a press or a filter so I’ll let you know. As most of you might know Coor’s has about 10 mash filters and have been using this technology since the early 1900&#8242;s, but Coor’s is currently in the process of upgrading to the newer Meura mash press design due to the higher efficiencies. I think they’ve converted over three so far.

Both types of filters are used worldwide quite regularly but you just don’t hear about them much. For some traditional brewers the mash press is taboo especially in Germany and the United States due to the stigma that it affects the flavor of the beer because you are grinding the malt so finely, but we disproved this with our mash press pilot test in 2000. That worry about flavor concerns was the main reason I wanted to test the system before we bought one and I’m glad to say we found no issues at all.

The reality is that worldwide they are an accepted and proven method of extracting the wort from the grains. Outside of the U.S. these machines are quite popular especially in remote locations in Europe, Russia, Africa, India, and China due to the efficiencies they bring for the cost of getting the raw ingredients to remote population centers. Heineken, Carlsberg, and Guinness are just a few of the large users. If you want to check references and locations for the mash press, Meura has a great reference list they can send. The other two manufacturers I know of that make the old style mash filters are Landaluce out of Spain, and Ziemann in Germany.

Hope this helps!
Curtis Holmes
Alaskan Brewing Company"

After Alaskan Brewing replaced their Lauter Tun with a Mash Press they found the savings to be real: 360,000 pounds of malt a year, one million gallons of water, and 65,000 gallons of diesel fuel. Spent grain now contains less water than in the past, making it easier to dry now and laying the foundation for using a biomass boiler.

As another large user, all of the Cooper's Malt Extracts are produced with a Mash Press.

great insight everyone. This is something i was never even aware existed. Sounds like a I just need to get space for a 250 bbl system

StMarcos said:

Is it much different than if I was to throw my spent mash in mesh cloth and then in my cider press? Doesn't the conventional wisdom say not to squeeze wort from the grains?

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It's a myth. Squeeze away!

bluelakebrewing said:

great insight everyone. This is something i was never even aware existed. Sounds like a I just need to get space for a 250 bbl system

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Maybe not quite THAT big

Last year Meura introduced their 2001 Micro series Mash Press. It can work with systems between 10 bbl-20 bbl. That is the press that IDD is using in their HEBS.

Another brewery manufacturer, Craftwerk Brewing Systems out of MI, is supposed to be working with Meura to offer more choices.

I will be going to the Craft Brewers Conference in DC later this month. I'm hoping to find out pricing and more information on the Mash Press and other new toys.

Maybe at the very least I could press my spent grain for use in starters. A little boiling and I'm sure I'd be at 1.030, as I batch sparge.