how is mashing done in most professional breweries?

anyone? Technique in general can't be too all over the map can it? How do most do it? All I ever see on display at my locals are big shiny copper kettles

Can you elaborate or be more specific? I'm not quite sure what you are asking. Is it type of vessel, brewpubs, large commercial breweries, time, temperature?

How do most breweries process beer? How do they mash, boil, cool, ferment. What's the process and equipment commonly used?

It's essentially the same we use just much much bigger.

i think they use steam, but i could be wrong.

http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue2.4/jones.html

Anyone do steam injection on a homebrew scale?

ThePonchoKid said:

How do most breweries process beer? How do they mash, boil, cool, ferment. What's the process and equipment commonly used?

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Big breweries use big equipment. A large regional or national plant is going to mash in huge stainless steel tuns with capacities of from hundreds to thousands of barrels. Anheuser-Busch mashes via ramped-infusion, or at least they used to. The mash starts at a lower temp (122F/50C) and is continually and slowly raised to saccharification temp. Many use a very long and very slow sparge which drains every possible molecule of sugar from the grain. The brew kettles are huge too of course. Cooling is done with equally large scale plate chillers and the wort is fermented in some big ass stainless conicals.

It's well worth the time to take a tour of a large scale brewery. While we as homebrewers and craft brew drinkers may not like their products the facilities and the process to produce the beer are quite impressive.

You may want to look at some of the information offered by the equipment manufacturers used by the larger breweries.

A lot of the AB InBev plants through out the world use Steinecker for the brewhouse. Steinecker products

New Belgium uses the Steinecker Merlin system.

Huppmann is another manufacturer of large systems Huppmann

All of the kettles at the Coors plant in Golden are made by Huppmann

Rolec equipment is being used by quite a few of the larger craft breweries such as Stone and Lagunitas

BrauKon is becoming quite popular with regional sized breweries such as Troegs, Sly Fox and Flying Fish.

Odell Brewing Company has a 105 bbl 4-vessel brewhouse on order from them.

Thanks for all the links. Likes all around

ThePonchoKid said:

Thanks for all the links. Likes all around

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You are welcome.

For smaller systems, such as 3-25 bbl brew length, you can get a good idea of what is used by looking at Specific Mechanical

Inside that copper kettle is a huge home depot water cooler. They mash in that.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

Inside that copper kettle is a huge home depot water cooler. They mash in that.

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I shot an altbier through my nose at this... Thanks for that...

ReverseApacheMaster said:

Inside that copper kettle is a huge home depot water cooler. They mash in that.

Click to expand...

Awesome. I'm giving a slow clap for this one because it made me laugh.

Most breweries infuse the strike water with the grain as it goes into the fermenter so it goes in wet.

In the videos I've seen they continuously "stir" the mash mechanically, opposed to a lot of us who stir a lot at the beginning and then let the mash rest for an hour.

I could be wrong though, never seen it in person.

The