How to Lower Bright Tank Temperature

[Lager Brewer]

Heritage,

Have you:
1. checked the calibration of the temp gauge of the BBT?
2. tried putting a sanitary thermowell just below the butterfly in-line on the way to your surgetank?
3. How long does it take you to empty the tank on a run?

[Sir Brewsalot]

Heritage,
This is a great thread - lots of us learning from your troubles, so I for one thank YOU.

Glad to hear the gravity check identified the icing in the tank for you. I'd also echo Mr. Murton's comments about running ambient temp water through as your test fluid. Not a representative test. You gotta run cold water thru it to get the same temperature graidients you're seeing with the beer.

If you have the tank space, fill one w/ water, crash it, and run it through and make your measurements. That filler bowl/tank has got to have some significant thermal mass, so that's where my money is.

Also, was wondering if you took any bottle temp measurements at the middle of the end of the run? This will give you a good indication of whether a pre-beer cold water equipment chilling run would address your problem.

Keep us posted!
S

[MikeJordan]

Having been through these issues I can feel your pain and I can share with you what I have done.

When working with an older Meyer's filler we couldn't really pinpoint the temp. problem until we installed a SS thermometer into the bowl. It was fairly easy as it was something we did in house. We realized even after pre-chilling the filler with cold water that we could only get the bowl temp down to 48-52F before bringing beer into the filler. We found that if we brought beer into the filler slowly and then pushed it back into the BBT with CO2 bowl pressure and then filled the filler bowl again we achieved cooling the bowl by another 10F. It can be a little tricky if you have a check valve inline and time consuming but for this particular small brewery it worked well. The actual temp of the empty bottles varied widely so we also rigged up a cooling spray to flow down the outside of the bottle after the botte rinser. This helped alot in the summer months and gave us better consistent fills with less product loss. Just some ideas for you. Good luck!

[Heritage]

Today was a disappointment. The beer was still frozen, it was at 38.8 degree F. The combination of glycol and tank insulation was sufficient to keep the beer frozen. By the end of the day the temperature had fallen to 38 degrees in the tank. We bottled any way a waste of time and beer.

Following sanitizing and sterilizing the bottler, we rinsed for 12 minutes with cold sanitizing solution to lower the temperature of the bottler. Unfortunately this solution is a70.6 degrees so it took away the high heat but did not lower the temperature of the filler to a good bottling temperature. We then turned on the glycol jacket on the surge tank and let it run for 30 minutes cooling the ss surge tank.

The surge tank is about 40 litres, and operates two thirds full, the head space is filled with CO2. The system calls for beer when the floats drop by one inch. So the pump presents about 4 litres of beer in 3 or 4 seconds, this happens every 3-4 minutes. For us to empty the tank takes about 6-10 minutes.

Those who suggested that ambient temperature water was a poor indicator of temperature performance were correct.

When we were started bottling, the brewery was at 71.6 degrees, air temperature at the surge tank is 73.4 degrees, BBT was 38, temperature, at the surge tank 39 to 42 degrees . (Lower end or range if the pump had just run). Indication that the beer was cooling the ss piping and hoses and the brewery air. So we were picking up 1-3 degrees of heat in 14 feet..

We added more insulation to the pipes and hoses The effect was minor, i.e. the temperature was 39 to 41.5 . So the temperature pick up at the filler from the butterfly valve to the bottle is 3.5 to 4 degrees.

Sir Brewsalot , yes we took bottle temperature throughout the day. Beer in the bottle was 46 degrees and remained constant throughout the day. This suggests that the beer is in the surge tank long enough for the temperature to blend.
BBT temperature fell from 38.8 to 38 during the day with no measurable impact on the temperature in the bottle.

So all the insulation saved us 6 degrees. (As you will recall we previously went from 38 to 51.8 and now it was 38 to 46.) We need to fill faster so that the beer has less time to warm. We will try additional insulation and are looking for a way to measure temperature in hoses.

We are going to swap out our heated CO2 regulator, which controls the CO2 going to the surge tank and see if this is causing the heating problem. This CO2 is also used for sift which can cause excessive foaming every 6 or 7 filling cycles (2 head filler)
We will also remove the 20 litre tank that is holding CO2 between the CO2 tank and the surge tank. This would warm the CO2 slightly. This was added at the manufacturers suggestion so that we could supply the volume of CO2 required by the surge tank while a bottle was filled.

Temperature gauge calibration – likely OK
We are using 2 digital thermometers that measure in 0.1 of a degree F and a analog mercury thermometer. There is little difference between the digital ones O.1 at the most. The digital temperatures match the mercury thermometer. So we have ruled out calibration. We use the digital thermometers at each stage in the process.

Mike I like the suggestion about bring beer in the surge tank and returning it to the BBT as a way of cooling the surge tank. We will try it when we bottle again on Saturday.

We will check tank temperature and carbbonation in the morning .

Thanks again for your help

Ron

[Lager Brewer]

I guess that I should have been more clear when I said that I had a similar situation. I had the same exact chiller unit, as well as a DME custom built tank. DME screwed up the brew calcs leaving 25 HL of beer needing cooling, with only the cone coming in complete contact with the beer. The top jacket was hit on one out of a possible 14 inches on a single batch.

I brew old school lagers, so the bulk of my cooling load comes from the CLT, pitching at as low as 7C. I am fortunate enough to have a true BBT so, I really didn't have too many problems with packaging until I tried to package a single batch out of a fermenter (we make unfiltered lagers).

I couldn't get the beer down to 0, and I couldn't figure out why (this is when I discovered the jacket placement problem). After going through the same rigamorole that you have (lowering the glycol, and coming in full bore) I found that the temp of the first few packages were cold, but after a short amount of time the beer temp shot up.

I thought that I had inadvertently frozen the beer too, so I moved the beer from one tank to another to find out the hard way, but not after putting a sightglass and a triclamp thermometer inline. To my surprised at the time, the beer temp inline rose (several degrees higher than the BBT thermo was telling me) as the transfer proceeded, and I hadn't turned the pump on yet. I checked the tank after it was drained, and no ice.

Came to find out that the bottom jacket was doing all of the work, and the surface area math wasn't in favor of getting the beer to zero. Asking a shrimpy cone jacket to bring a whole batch down is pointless.

My solution was to alter my brew length in the brewhouse for single batches, and that took care of the problem. Obviously this doesn't solve your current problem, but maybe it will help for the future if you can't solve the downstream issues.

Just trying to help.

[Heritage]

Thank you for clarifying your comments.

Today when we filtered the beer was at 33.6 degrees as it entered to the BBT (unitank) and there was 1650 litres in the tank. So the beer covers the both cone and side wall glycol jackets and the thermo well which via a control manages glycol flow. We are leaving the beer to cool over night before packaging.

Normally, we would have kegged out 500 litres leaving the rest for bottling, thinking that we were leaving less for the chiller to cool and that this would happen more quickly. However kegging uncoved both the thermo well and the side wall jacket. For the chiller to cool we had to by pass the controller and run the glycol wide open at a very low temperature (26 degrees was our final attempt). By-passing the controller created the too warm beer situation, as the beer was unevenly cooled with very cold beer at the bottom of the cone and too warm beer at the surface.

Hopefully this will resolve the tank temperature problem.

We are still searching for the cause of the increase in temperature between the tank and the bottle.
We are now wondering if it made worse by the increased insulation, trapping the heat of sterilization and releasing it slowly as we bottle. One of the observation we made was that the temperature at the butterfly valve for the surge tank fell from 42 to 39 when the pump was running and then it rose to 42 again. The heat is coming from some where.

On a trial basis tomorrow we are going to sterilized an insulated hose (180 degree water for 40 minutes), then run cold sanitizer for 12 minutes as is our practice. Then we will fill the hose with beer and check the temperature. We will do the same with an uninsulated hose and track the temperature changes.

This will tell us if we need to go to ss pipe wrapped in copper pipe and run glycol through the copper pipe to remove the heat.

I will keep you posted.

Thank you again for your help and interest.


Ron

[hoppyguy]

There is alot of talk about temperature being the issue here. Granted, temperature does have a big effect in bottling beer, but it is not the only. I found it interesting there is a secondary CO2 holding tank on the system, and there is an issue every 6-7 cycles. One of the biggest problems I have encountered bottling beer is CO2 issues. Most CO2 suppliers that smaller brewers use are used to suplling restaurants and have very little experience servicing a production facility. The whole counter pressure thing can be very touchy and also very dependent on your particular filler. I would look at making sure the bottles are getting completely pressurized and then ensuring the gas is released in a controlled manner. Although they are not optimal conditions, you should be able to bottle beer at the temperatures you are noticing. Make sure you are truly getting the volume of CO2 you need to run the machine. You may also want to talk to the manufacturer about adjusting the settings.

[Heritage]

Hoppyguy
You are right that CO2 pressure is critical to successful bottle filling; it is particularly true with the PPM Evolution filler. It has been a challenge to get the pressures right and to deliver the volume of CO2 required.
For filling to work we must maintain 30-psi pressure in the surge tank and 38 pounds for the push back.

We have one CO2 cylinder dedicated to push back and another (with a heated regulator) connected to the surge tank.

Until we purchased a Concoa heated regulator we were freezing the CO2 tank and could not get an adequate supply of CO2 for pre-evacuation and pushback.

With beer at less than 36 degrees we can bottle as long as we maintain the pressures and flow of CO2 required by the system. When ever the pressure in the bowl (surge tank) drops below 30 of the flow of CO2 is inadequate from the pushback CO2 cylinder then we has an improperly filled bottles and sometimes just bottles of foam.

When the temperature is over 36 we can bottle by slowing down the process and lowering the pressures to, 18 and 26 pounds, unfortunately this turns then machine into a 2 bottles per minute machine ( 4 cases an hour). which is just not good enough. The failure to fill is the direct result of inadequate pressure in the bottle before filling.

Sirbrewsalot and MikeJordan

Tests show that there is a lot of heat left in the hose and pipes, which is consistent with your observations. So we will be sterilizing a glycol heat exchanger when we sterilize the bottler, then when sanitizing the filler we will turn the glycol on, chill the sanitizing solution and let the sanitizing solution flow through the filler until we reach 32-24 degrees. This will be longer than the 12 minutes with tap 70 degree sanitizer we have been doing. We will measure the temperature of the discharge water and continue until we reach 32-34 degrees..

Our beer is at 32.4 this morning (gycol 32 at the chiller supply side) so that's good. We expect to get the filler to a similiar temperature tomorrow morning before we bottle.

Thank you

Ron

[Sir Brewsalot]

This may be a little off topic, and pardon my ignorance since most of my bottling experience is not with beer, but have you considered priming and bottle conditioning? Seems like it might be a whole lot simpler, but might not be right for your beer, and your setup.

Just wondering.

Otherwise, it sounds like you're getting close to isolating the issue.

S

[Heritage]

SirBrewsaLot
Yes we have considered developing a bottle conditioned product and have experimeneted with it.

You are right taht bottle conditioned products would behave differently in the filler. The lower carbonation levels make it some what easier to bottle.

We have already lowered our carbonation level from 2.72 to 2.54 to help with our current situation.

Ron

[hmois]

Cold Beer For Bottling

When i was brewing in Co. we had this warm beer problem all the time,i got so mad after a while so i hooked up my heatexchanger (after claening and sanatizing) between tank and filler ,filled it with water first so all oxygen was out ,kept the whole thing under tank and filler pressure and run icewater stored and chilled in a emty tank in circulation (prepared ahead for the bottling day).i startedwith 10 bbl icewater 33.5 degrees and after i botteled 20 bbl (that was all we did at one day) the watertemperature was up on 34til 36 degrees.the beer temp was around 37-39.
and bottling was great from then the average beertemp.in the bottle was 33.5
to this time i was also considering to hook up my glycol chiller to the heatexchanger so bad was bottling on this old worn out s....
on top of warm beer
hope it helps-prost
Harry

[Heritage]

We tried to apply this weeks learning when we bottled on Saturday.

The change in the glycol setting on the chiller supply to 32 resulted in 35 degree beer. Better that 38-39 but still not 32 -34.

After sterilizing the filler we measured temperature of the filler and sanitizer coming out of the filler - filler temperature after sterilization 147 degrees at the buttery fly valve and exit sanitizer of 152.

Normally we would have stopped running the sanitizer after 12 minutes. This time used our glycol chilled heat exchanger to cool the sanitizer and ran it through the filler. We were able to lower the temperature to 39 degrees at the butterfly valve with 41 degree exit solution after 45 minutes. The temperature then held steady for the next 7 minutes.

So started filling and beer in bottle at 41 - 42 degrees. We had limited success 4 cases an hour. 10% of rated thruput.

Need to understand why the temperature stopped falling and why the temperature increased from 35 to 39 between the tank and the filler.

Believe that we were unable to cool the pump sufficiently with the cooled sanitizing solution.

The answer may be to sterilize the night before, fill with a sanitizing solution and then cool in the morning. We could also just acid wash the pump.

What sanitizing solution would be best to leave in the filler overnight?