Zhongde Equipment Co.,Ltd.Shandong

[Fortnight-Stu]

There seems to have been several posts asking for info on Zhongde Equipment Co.,Ltd.Shandong on this forum. I bit the bullet and bought a BH and several FV's from them. The first containers arrived today. I'll try and post regular updates related to the install on this thread. Ask questions and I'll do my best to answer.

Note that we won't start the actual assembly for a few weeks since we have yet to finish the concrete work. I'll be posting regular pictures on our Facebook page and Twitter feed.

[CuscoPeruBrewer]

Zhongde info

Hi

I am looking at possibly getting a complete system built by Zhongde... how long did it take them to build and ship across to the US?

Did you end up considering quotes from any other China manufacturers?

thanks for your help and look forward to your info and feedback on Zhongde.

Juan

[jemthebrewer]

Repost from another thread...here goes:

Hi folks, I thought I would chime in here. I will give my fair, honest feedback here on the 15 bbl 3 vessel brewhouse that was purchased from them by my former employer. First of all, we needed horizontal fermenters at our facility, due to ceiling height restrictions. So at the end of each fermentation, the beer is moved to another empty FV for aging. The overall design of the tanks (30 bbl) is quite interesting. The cladding is not up to my quality standards, as some of the insulation is exposed. Some of the tanks required 2 passivation cycles, and the welds on the inside are also not of the very high quality standards that I generally look for. The horizontal BBTs (30 bbl) are of similar design, but single wall, so no cladding/insulation issues. There is a fair bit of liquid holdup in the horizontal tanks, as well...and the welds on the supports of the tanks failed when some of the BBTs were being calibrated.

On the brew deck itself, we had 2 15 bbl conical unitanks, which were of average quality (save for interior welds...again, I thought they were not really to my standards). The brewhouse was a 3-vessel system...mash mixer, lauter tun and kettle. The mash mixer worked great...steam jacketed and plumbed to go directly to the kettle for decoctions (if desired). The lauter tun design wasn't so great...large gaps in the grates, tack welded supports. Our system had rakes that were able to be raised/lowered hydraulically. After many months, they finally were working as they were supposed to (and worked quite well, actually). The plow design for grain-out isn't optimal, but it is functional. Also, the liquid draws out of the lauter were welded in a convex shape, not concave, so there was a fair bit of dead space in the lauter that you could not drain out. The kettle (steam jacketed with an agitator) was functional...had no issues with it really. There was no dam designed on the outer draw to the HX, and the outer draw is close to the center, so we had a dam engineered which helped with the hoppy beers. There is/was a tangential port that was used for whirlpooling.

The HX seems to be functional with no leaks, but we can't run the water from the CLT to the HX wide open...we run it at about 1/2 open (controlled with a valve).

The control panel is a combination of touch-screen and switches. Some of the parts are non-standard, so if they fail, it could be a challenge to replace.

The glycol unit purchased from them burned out immediately, due to the distribution pumps being rated at 50 Hz. Also, no one locally could make heads or tails of how to hook it up. That system had to be replaced in its entirety at a fairly large expense.

The glycol control panel is touch screen, and worked OK until we had a software crash. To their credit, they helped us as much as they could, but it took a few weeks to get back up and running.

One of the CLT glycol jackets was leaking and non-functional, so the CLT has only one working jacket. A weld failed on the bottom of the HLT, but that was easily fixed by a local welder.

I had little communication with anyone at Zhongde (the Brewmaster I worked for did most of that work) but there were times of excellent communication followed by long times of silence.

When all of the vessels arrived, they were quite dirty. Most of the process piping elbows we received from them ultimately had to be replaced.

The mill is an old looking 4-roller unit that is loud as hell. It is functional, yet very challenging to adjust properly. The grist case they provided works fine...conical shape with a 1200 pound grist capacity.

We had to install a few VFDs after the fact that should have been there in the first place (mash mixer pump and flex auger motor to grist case).

I can directly compare the quality of the Zhongde unitanks to those of ABT. The welds and design of the ABTs are much better (the brewery where I now work just received a shipment of ABTs). The ABTs were also much cleaner on the inside.

The CIP cart that Zhongde furnished is actually quite nice...2 barrel reservoirs and a 1.5 HP pump. It really isn't that portable, but we used it in an area where there was process piping to fermenters and the brew deck, so it worked fine.

Both HLT and CLT pumps had to be replaced after less than a year in service, as did the beer transfer pump.

Finally, they also provided a 4 square meter DE filter. The filter was a challenge to figure out how to use, but we were able to get it to work. The dosing tank has no de-aeration device in it, and we could not easily remove the screens. The screens were showing some signs of corrosion and wear after a year's use.

I have some pictures that I took that I can share with anyone interested in seeing them. I hope that (rather lengthy) summary of my experience helps?

Overall, the system that they provided to my former employer looks nice from a distance. Everything on the brew deck has a mirror polish to it. The observation that I made is that as you get closer, the craftsmanship doesn't look quite as nice. Sometimes it is a copy of some other design, or some completely new (and unfamiliar) design.

Jim Matt
Head Brewer, Rhinegeist Brewery

Link to pictures here

[Amit]

Have a look before you buy

I have been brewing for the last two years in Chinese manufactured plants, I would recommend whosoever it is you are buying from, It would pay a long way if you go to the plant and analyse it yourself. Welds are certainly of poor quality like jemthebrewer mentioned. I had to get a lot of rewelding done from local welders too here. Maybe you should consider only buying FV's and storage tanks from China. There are a lot of companies in India who have started manufacturing brewhouses and FV's and have tie ups with Belgium and Austrian manufacturers. From personal experience, Indian quality in manual skill far exceeds that of the Chinese, its an unbiased opinion. Also the pumps don't have VFD controls, CIP pumps breakdown in the middle of production several times, The PLC doesn't control much apart from automatic cooling and showing temperature. The contractors in the PLC in my current plant are of 40 A, whereas the heating coils connected to them draw atleast 50-53 A, this leads to heating of the contractor. The heating coils came with only an ON and Off system which doesn't work too well when you have to boil for an hour as the excess heat leads to over boil. I am now running the kettle at half the heating coils and there is no problem.

The last plant that came from China for a brewpub in Mumbai was completely cut open by a German brewer. The tanks, pipes and everything else and was rewelded as per as his needs.

So like I said, don't wait to check the plant when it arrives. Best to get the things fixed at the manufacturing end. Trust me most of the Chinese parts are not of international standards so its hard to find replacements.

Cheers
Amit

[Fortnight-Stu]

Hi

I am looking at possibly getting a complete system built by Zhongde... how long did it take them to build and ship across to the US?

Did you end up considering quotes from any other China manufacturers?

thanks for your help and look forward to your info and feedback on Zhongde.

Juan

Apologies for the slow response, I didn't have email notification turned on.

We actually bought a showroom model from Zhongde, I believe they had been using it at a trade show. Consequently we didn't really have a lead time. We did request some modifications to the system however and these were handled in a timely manner. The equipment shipped on time and Zhongde also allowed us to fill the empty container space with kegs and cask we purchased from another company.
We didn't get any other quotes, the offer we received was never going to be matched by anyone.

[Fortnight-Stu]

We're hoping to tip our tanks next week and start the install. I'll try post anything interesting that happens. There'll be picture updates on our facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/fortnightbrewing

Stu

[goldstein114]

Zhongde

My boss purchased an entire 25 BBL Brewhouse from Zhongde (Including 4 50 BBL Fermenters, 50 BBL Bright Tank, Keg Washer, Keg Filler, Bottling Line, Mash/Lauter, Boil, HLT, Ice Water Tank, Grain Mill).

Much like the comments so far, the system seems good from afar, but far from good. We are in the final stages of building the brewhouse and this 1 month process has turned into 3 (so far). While they stated only 3 or 4 things needed to be welded, we've had a professional welder working 40 hour weeks for the last month and a half on the countless welds that needed to be done/fixed/taken apart.

Some major flaws have come up throughout the process which have definitely set us back considerably. The brewhouse was pre-setup in China for testing, they forgot to test the flow-meter, so a lot of pre-fitted pipes needed to be re-fitted. No piping was included to allow liquoring back into the boil, had to redesign the area. Half the gauges were sent in Metric, half in Standard. Sent too few fittings. They used electrical fittings instead of plumbing fittings for the glycol jacket lines, which means no amount of tightening/plumbing tape would ever stop all leaks (glycol has a magical way of flowing freely through even the smallest leaks). Haven't tested the grain mill yet but I'm definitely afraid after hearing other people here talk about the same mill.

Make sure when you look at the "price" on the equipment, you realize that you will need to invest considerably more to get these to any working condition, you're getting the quality you pay for.

[Fortnight-Stu]

Sounds like you've had a rough ride Goldstein. Hopefully we will be more fortunate,

As an update we have tipped the thanks and started plumbing the BH. No real issues so far.

Some pictures here.... https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

[BrewerMikeH]

Any updates on the build?

Hey Stu,

I was wondering if there was any updates on you brewery build with the Zhongde equipment?

I'm thinking about buying Chinese equipment for my new brewery but I've been reading a lot of shitty reviews.

Thanks

[txbeerknurd]

We have the Zhongde Glycol system and need to reprogram the screen layout, does anyone know the password to get into it?