Johannes Tippmann (1), Thomas Becker (1), Franz Heidenreich (1), Christoph Neugrodda (1); (1) Technische Universität München, Weihenstephan, Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany

Brewhouse Operations
Poster

In spring 2016, the installation and commissioning of a probably unique fully-automated 8-L small-scale brewhouse was finished. Brewing small-scale batches is essential for research, especially if raw materials are only available in small amounts or new recipes should be developed. Up to this time, the small-scale brews in the Research Brewery of Weihenstephan were done with a system where many of the working steps were operated manually. The risk of bad reproducibility was always present, and a very experienced operator was the requirement for success. The new system is fully automated. Not only the high reproducibility, also the automated recording of all of the process data is a big advantage of the new brewhouse. All the vessels are made of glass which makes direct monitoring of the processes inside possible. This is essential to evaluate a stirrer or to collect more data from the lautering process, for example. The presentation will introduce the new system, explain difficulties in commissioning the system and show results of comparing brews with the two other brewhouses in the Research Brewery in a 80-L scale and a 800-L scale. In particular the scale-up trials are very interesting, as it must be possible to predict the brewing success in the small-scale brewhouse for brewhouses at the industrial scale.

Christoph Neugrodda was born in Trier, Germany. After completing his military service in 2003, he began an apprenticeship as a brewer and maltster at the Bitburger brewery in Bitburg, Germany. He successfully completed his apprenticeship, as the best in his class, in February 2006. He then started working as a full-time brewer in the Bitburger brewery. In October 2006 he started studying brewing and beverage technology at the Technische Universität München-Weihenstephan, Germany. He graduated as an engineer with a Dipl.-Ing. degree in 2012. His diploma thesis focused on the characterization of hop proteins. This project was funded by the Barth Haas Grant and was then granted the Nienaber Prize in 2013. Since April 2012 he has been working as a scientific employee at the Institute for Brewing and Beverage Technology in Weihenstephan. Beer foam is the focus of his research, and he also contributes to the innovative research projects happening at the research brewery in Weihenstephan.