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  • brite beer pump, what to use?

    hi all, i am building a small brewery in Thailand at the moment (30,000 liters/month). we will be producing tropical fruit ciders for the Thai market, hopefully in about 3-6 month.

    i have no commercial brewing experience, just home brewing, so i hope you fine experts will take pity on a newbee and help me out with some of your wisdom.

    the brewery is a 100mm thick PU panel room and the FVs are 3000 liter with their own integral cooling jackets. i have 2x 14.4kw chillers outside to keep the FVs cool. it slightly warmer than the surface of the sun here, so we need quite a bit of cooling.

    i have a question about pumping finished cider, which is basically the same as beer, to the filter and bolting machine. what kind of pump do people typically use, a centrifugal or something else like a peristaltic pump or some other low agitation pump? or do you just push it out of the tank with pressure?

    if centrifugal, would that be open or enclosed impeller and at what RPM?

    my bottling machine is 1000b/hr x 300ml bottles so about 300liters/hour flow rate.

    i will kill the yeast in the clearing tanks with potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulphite (unless anyone has a better idea) so there should not be any live yeast in the finished cider. but i'm worried about too much agitation causing problems with the CO2 in suspension.

    you advice please about pumps or anything really, thanks, steve
    Full Moon Winery, Thailand
    http://www.fullmoonwinery.com/

  • #2
    For bottling you're going to want to use pressure to move your cider, generally anywhere from 1-1.5 bar head pressure. Try to keep your cider as close to freezing as possible while you're bottling to help stabilize the CO2 in suspension.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by gabewilson50
      For bottling you're going to want to use pressure to move your cider, generally anywhere from 1-1.5 bar head pressure. Try to keep your cider as close to freezing as possible while you're bottling to help stabilize the CO2 in suspension.
      thanks, so that's pressurizing the tank with air or CO2? i assume CO2 since you don't want oxygen anywhere near the beer (cider).

      how much compressed CO2 is required to pressurize a 3000L tank to 1.5 bar? and what to do with all that CO2 once the tank is empty? do you just vent it outside or do people compress it back into the bottles?

      thx steve
      Last edited by fullmoonwinery; 04-03-2010, 06:30 PM.
      Full Moon Winery, Thailand
      http://www.fullmoonwinery.com/

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      • #4
        There's no real (economically feasible) alternative but to vent the CO2 into the atmosphere at this scale, unfortunately. I'm assuming that you'll need CO2 for the filler as well (for the purge and counter-pressure), so for 3000 liter tank you'll probably just use less than a 15 kg tank, but I'd get a 25 kg tank in case there are any leaks, pauses, etc. or especially if you're going to bottle another batch in the future.

        Hope this helps. As a disclaimer, I've never worked with cider, but I'm assuming that I'd treat it just as I treat beer.

        --Gabe

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        • #5
          Originally posted by gabewilson50
          There's no real (economically feasible) alternative but to vent the CO2 into the atmosphere at this scale, unfortunately. I'm assuming that you'll need CO2 for the filler as well (for the purge and counter-pressure), so for 3000 liter tank you'll probably just use less than a 15 kg tank, but I'd get a 25 kg tank in case there are any leaks, pauses, etc. or especially if you're going to bottle another batch in the future.

          Hope this helps. As a disclaimer, I've never worked with cider, but I'm assuming that I'd treat it just as I treat beer.

          --Gabe
          thanks, that's really good to know. cider is pretty much the same as beer at the back end, full of CO2, not flat like wine. at the start its far simpler than beer; its just just apple juice, lime juice, sugar and yeast plus bentonite and pectic enzyme to help it clear later.
          Full Moon Winery, Thailand
          http://www.fullmoonwinery.com/

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          • #6
            [QUOTE=fullmoonwinery]
            i will kill the yeast in the clearing tanks with potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulphite (unless anyone has a better idea) so there should not be any live yeast in the finished cider. but i'm worried about too much agitation causing problems with the CO2 in suspension.


            I'd rather use sterile filtration than stuffing the cider full of chemicals, even if sulphites are widely used in the wine industry.

            Now I seem to remember there was a problem with using sorbates - but as usual, am not close enougth to that side of things to be absolutely sure. If I get a cahnce to follow up once I am work, I will update this comment
            dick

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            • #7
              I'm with Dick on this.

              Sterile filtration makes good sense. Sorbate will not kill yeast. It can (if used properly) be used to halt yeast growth and effectively stop fermentation. And BTW, centrifugal pumps are just fine with bottling. The CO2 will NOT come out of solution if it's done right. Pumps increase pressure, so carbonated liquids will be less saturated out of a pump.
              Last edited by gitchegumee; 04-04-2010, 08:52 PM.
              Phillip Kelm--Palau Brewing Company Manager--

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              • #8
                thanks, so by sterile filtration, do you mean 1um or below?
                Full Moon Winery, Thailand
                http://www.fullmoonwinery.com/

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by fullmoonwinery
                  thanks, so by sterile filtration, do you mean 1um or below?
                  Below, usually around 0.6 micron. 1 micron will still let some single cells of bacteria through.

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                  • #10
                    backsweeten with potassium sorbate?

                    Hello all,

                    I am kind of new in this forum and i have similar doubts about backsweeten a beer. We have been asked to produce a sweet wheat beer. We have considered filtering the beer but we want to keep a haziness form wheat. We have heard different options like mashing at high temperatures to get more non fermentable sugars but mashing at higher temperatures may not seem the way to go to get the sweetness we want

                    Adding potassium sorbate and thend backsweeten the beer with the syrup we want is another option but we have never tried before.
                    I have read plenty of books that says that is true that potassium sorbate does not kill the yeast but it stops by reproducing it, so the best moment to add it is when fermentation have stopped and wait for a overnight to backsweet.

                    My question: if I do not want to filtrate the beer because i want to keep the haziness of the beer, Could I add potassium sorbate to backsweet my beer?

                    P.D. sorry for the long Post

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