Open FV's in breweries

[Sandimas]

I've had a fair few infections despite being rigorous with cleanliness, I put it down to bewing in the kitchen with fruit and fruit flies around. Only seems to happen in the warm months June-Oct. I guess breweries don't have any fruit or other food laying about.

 

[les-goose]

FV never filled to top because of the Fob and the fact CO2 produced during fermentation its not left long enough to get close to starting to get an infection. The one thing in the Brewing industry is to make sure the vessel its going into is as sterile as possible old wooden barrel was filled with boiling water when they went out and it went to stainless or alloy kegs the sterilisation got even better. We had a washer where you put the keg on upside down and a probe went into the spear. It went through a process of drain then boiling hot water for 30 seconds then drain then 30 seconds of very hot cleaning agent drain again then another 30 seconds of boiling water drain and then steam for 1 min then a short drain. The keg was then put on filling unit we also had a keg inspection area where a couple of blokes took some empty kegs out of the system at random and they were looked at inside to make sure everything was as it should be. We never pasteurised any beer as it was passed through some very fine filters. The traditional ale cask/conditioned is a live product and all we did once kegged was add isinglass fining's to it. I worked at Eshaldwell Brewery Woodlesford Leeds it was the old Bentleys Yorkshire Brewery that Whitbreads took over in 1966/67. I was there when it was Whitbreads from !977 to being made redundant in 1984 my Dad started back in his second stint there in 1962 so was there a long time. So long as you sterilise your gear you wont go far wrong for a little insight to that brewery do a search for Woodlesford station there is a section on the brewery as it was right next to it.

 

[geetee]

Bright beer for bottles and kegs are usually put through a plate filter to remove all of the yeast and particles but also some of the hop flavour as well. This is essential to give the bottles a longer shelf life.

There are lots of different types of filter, some just small pores some containing diatomaceous earth which act as micro filters but all do the same job, clear the beer and stabilise it. I have heard that Brewdog actually centrifuge their beers to sediment out all of the particles.

Cask and bottled conditioned are beer with nowt taken out and can be totally different from the keg version. I have had several from a local Brewery, Wylam where they launch three versions together Cask,Keg and bottle and they can be entirely different.

 

[dad_of_jon]

100% behind that statement.
Lots of folk on here talk about 'infections' with apparent authority, but have probably never had one themselves, they have only read about them. Chinese whispers springs to mind.
As for open FVs in commercial breweries, this has been common practice for many many years and if it hadn't worked brewers would have found another way to brew beer.

remember bruintuns?
poor sod.

I am a bit ocd about how to avoid infections because I don't think my hobby could survive throwing 30+ pints down the drain.

I innoculate my fv and use chlorinated tap water and ashbeck/starsan.

but brew indoors and dont have problems with fruit flies, but a lid is still going on :mrgreen:

 

[MyQul]

This is a good youtube vid on open fermentation on the HB scale as they actually have a crack at it and the results are then anaylsed and reviewed

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9xT8DHOZFE[/ame]