Water conservation in the brewery.

Koelle, R.N.

Abstract
Although production of beer commonly requires consumption of about ten times the volume of water the actual water requirement depends very much on the techniques used in the brewery. In recent times increasing regulations on effluent disposal as well as problems with the availability of water and its cost have increased the pressure on the brewer to be more economical in the use of water. Areas where savings can be made in water use and also at the same time in labour costs are cleaning, bottling and processing. In place cleaning systems can be relatively economical in many ways compared to manual cleaning whilst the 'packed header system' of bottling also leads to lower water use as well as a significantly reduced capital cost. The system appears also to be associated with improved performance from the point of view of beer loss and the air content of bottles. At the processing level water can be recovered by pressing trub and spent grains. The water heat balance is also an important consideration in most breweries and the hot water produced during wort cooling can be used for a wide variety of purposes including boiler feed water.
Keywords: bottling brewing economisation water