How do breweries turn out beer so quickly

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mm707

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Hi,

May be a daft question but just wondering how they are able to get the beer right after fermenting into barrels and then out to the pubs as when I make it ( all grain ) it seems to take about 6-8 weeks before it's at it's best
 
From the Ringwood brewery - it takes about 10 days upwards, which you could achieve with home brew if you wanted to. I don't notice much benefit from aging beer, mainly clarity which commercially is achieved with isinglass finings.

Commercial bottled beer takes somewhat longer.
 
Ahh, thanks, I thought they just put it into kegs and sent it straight to pubs :doh:
 
mm707 said:
Ahh, thanks, I thought they just put it into kegs and sent it straight to pubs :doh:
Click to expand...


Broad process is that the beer is fermented for a few days, before it has finished it is sent to cold condition in very large vats for about a week (yeast stop with the cold) then into a cask with isinglass. In the cask the unfermented sugars are fermented by the now warm and settled yeast to carbonate the beer (cask conditioned). At the pub it then takes a few more days before it is finally served.

also takes us longer because we tend to let it ferment out then add priming sugar. I suppose technically you could monitor the gravity and fine/keg it when just the right amount of sugar is left.
 
And yet when we make all malt brews, it often takes several weeks after bottling before the beer becomes at it's best. You don't of course get a list of ingredients when you buy brewery beer though do you. I can think of several of the big names who appear to simply take the run-off from the sewage system, filter out the lumps and sell it back to us. Or at least that's what it tastes like... :lol:
 
ferment a beer for 5days at 22c constant, then multi pass filter and keg it, 2 days in the cold to force carb it, then drink.
if you bottle or keg and carb with priming sugar it will take an extra 2 weeks.

to have a nice beer in under 2 weeks you need a brew fridge/heater set up and conri kegs
 
They also have double skin fermenting vats that are filled with gel. This gives them absolute control over the fermenting temperature which they can adjust by pumping cold gel in to chill the wort or warm gel to heat the wort dependent on ambient temperature and heat generated by fermentation.

They can control well within 1*C of the optimum temperature for the yeast they they are using, ensuring the highest efficiency of the yeast. They can ferment in 5 days what takes the homebrewer with more variable temperatures a few days longer.

This doesn't necessarily make the beer good, just very efficient!
 
Have the fridge, heater, corni & gas... wonder how I could speed filter? Cold crash + finings for a couple of days then wine filter maybe?

With a basic cheap lager kit (ale yeast), something like:
Ferment for 7 days
Add finings + cold crash for 5 days
Rack to corni through a wine filter, add 30psi, back in fridge for 2 days
14 days --> Drink?

Probably strip most of the flavour out and be one bland tasting beer... and likely low abv at that.

Not sure I'd want to put all that effort in, even as an experiment! Think I'd rather wait a bit longer and look forward to my pint :grin:
 
Folks at my work (including me) put in a bulk order to St Peters for some ale & beer last week. The cream stout was out of stock at the time and on enquiring, we were told it was being made last week and would be available for purchase this week.

Well, I'm drinking one now and it's fantastic! How can they do this so quick? Surely you've still got to wait on the yeast? Is it a special yeast? Is it force filtered and then force carbed into the bottle?

Clearly I've never seen the insides of a brewery... :oops:

I'm stunned on the quality of this for a younger than 2 week old beer. Now curious...
 
Breweries that cab crank out the beer fast are typically making smaller beers and have all the tools to decrease the lag time in every step. Starting with active yeast that starts eating the second it hits the wort that has been oxygenated so they can reproduce and build strong cell walls. Proper control of temp to force the yeast into various states to expedite the process then filtering and carbonating bypassing the bottling stage. If you have the time and toys you can turn around a beer quickly otherwise you gave to wait :(
 
Just to reiterate what was said before. Conditioning time is a slightly misleading concept but useful for home brewers. More strictly, there is a desired end, especially including the clarification of the beer. This will fall out over time in accord with Stokes Law. There are about 5 things that that encourage this. Conditioning at lower temperatures significantly increases the speed of this. Breweries can achieve this by refrigerating conditioning vessels as noted above. Increasing the size of particles also speeds up the process. As noted, using coagulants after conditioning achieves this.

There is another thing that is common. Increasing gravitational force speeds up the clarification of the beer. Very expensive machines called centrifuges use a whirlpool like effect to achieve in seconds what would ordinarily take weeks to achieve. These are the things that make mass manufacturing possible and also decrease product losses at other stages of brewing. There are a few notable producers of these including Alfa Laval.
 

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