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centrifuging Hefe

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  • centrifuging Hefe

    We run a GEA Westfalia SC 35-06 centrifuge. We produce an award winning Hefe with a very consistent yeast cell count of 2-4 million cells per ML. We do not have the capacity to do different cell counts for bottles and kegs. It has recently been brought to my attention that this beer takes us longer to process than our other beers. We chill this beer to 35F. Our typical tank time is 8 days brew day to 'fuge day. Our cellerman has a good feel for hitting our tank cell counts. He used to have to do counts during the process now he just has to look at the beer. We hook one hose to the bottom of the cone and one to the racking arm so we can "meter" in yeast to get maximum beer recovery from our fermentors.
    I have been asked to make this process faster. I am told by my new boss that this should be our fastest beer to move and that other breweries would laugh at it being our slowest. I have been looking at our Hefe a lot as of late and have decided to bump the cell count up to 3-5 million.
    I have talked with both of my cellerman and they think the only way to speed up the process is to either not recover as much beer from the yeast in the cone or to up the cell count even higher. I am wondering what other breweries do and how they like it?

  • #2
    Hey,

    We'll be playing with a GSE-35 in the near future (around August). We have the separator with a VSD, the feed pump will have a VSD, and there will be turbitity meters on the intlet and outlet.

    Scenario:
    • bring tank bottoms on at low flowrate rate - the separator will reduce the feed pump flow if turbidity high (so say start-up on 50% of design flowrate).
    • separator will increase feed flow as turbidity begins to decrease (i.e. as you start to get through the bottom of the tank).
    • during all of this the outlet turbidity will control the discharge frequency.


    So I don't think there is any problem, assuming you have the process control in place (GEA should be able to engineer it for you). But be careful not to block the separator! In our scenario the design yeast count is 40million/ml, with the separator accepting anything up to around 240million/ml at very low flow rates.

    Regards,

    Alex

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