Commercial Fly Sparge

I'm having a little trouble finding a good answer in my searches and this is kinda bugging me. How do commercial breweries fly sparge? I'm looking at commercial systems and almost all are that usual two vessel mlt & kettle setup. At home I have three vessels, the third being the hlt. Without the htl, where do commercial breweries get their sparge water and/or how do they heat it? If I had to guess, most of these two vessel commercial systems are steam heated so the brewery can heat water to 170-180 degrees on the fly and pump it wherever they want. Is that correct or am I missing something?

The brewery I spend some time at has a hot liquor tank, a mash tun, and a kettle. I imagine you could use a steam-jacketed mash-tun, but it also seems like that would take longer than the use of a hot liquor tank, and commercial operations are all about consistency and efficiency. I suppose it depends on how big of a system we're talking about, but my local brew pup that does production brewing and bottling/kegging is generally pushing out 25-35 barrels per batch.

I was thinking they may be able to get water as hot as boiling out of the tap because of the availability of steam to heat it. The big thing you'd lose tough is the ability to adjust the water in any sort of vessel.

When you see the two vessel systems, there is going to be a second vessel under the MLT. It is usually designated as a HLT, but could also be called a whirlpool. The HLT may or may not have it's own heat source. If it doesn't, the water is heated in the kettle then pumped over to the HLT/Whirlpool. I have brewed on 11 commercial systems, have spec'd out several breweries and inspected quite a few others as a consultant and have never seen a commercial system that heated water on the fly, the flow rate would require a massive steam heatex and a larger boiler. Some very small breweries have used large hot water heaters for mash/sparge and some others have started using on demand systems, but the reports of the later seem to be mixed at best.

The ideal situation is to have a HLT that has it's own heat source and a capacity of 2x your knockout volume, but where money and/or space is tight, that might not be an option. The stacked MLT/HLT and BK systems are sufficient for most pub applications and ok for production up to a certain point. Production breweries that have those stacked systems and try to do multiple brews in a day sometimes add a second HLT to keep up with the demand.

Gotcha. Thank you. I was having trouble thinking a commercial brewery would pump straight tap water into their mash even if it could be heated on the fly. An extra vessel under the mlt makes a whole lot of sense and also answers my other question of why the mlt side of these systems is always so tall. The volume needed to mash and fly sparge is fairly small compared to the volume and headspace needed to boil the full batch. It wasn't quite adding up in my head.

wailingguitar you seem awfully experienced to be hanging around these parts. Have you gotten out of the commercial side of things?

You're very welcome While I am not currently brewing professionally, when I did I was always actively involved with the homebrewing community. I am also a forum regular on probrewer.com (under the screen name bham brewer) It's all about better beer, right? I haven't had the boots on in a while, but have done some simple consulting in recent years; is this system going to work for us? is the price right? are these tanks too damaged to be worth repairing? etc. Currently seeking backers for a new brewing venture, hope it works out!

I thought you and bham brewer sounded similar hah. I've been stalking probrewer myself. Doing homework, seeing what's out there for systems. A couple home brewers and I in atl have been talking about setting up shop and trying to figure out how to fund something small. Maybe 5-7bbl just to get things off the ground and test the waters. I have a couple backers lined up but not enough to cover the entire operation. Without the experience that you have though, I have to cross my fingers extra extra hard and let my beer speak for itself. We'll see. Good luck in your venture. Having moved from Birmingham a year ago, I know AL has a thirsty and growing craft market.

Spintab said:

I thought you and bham brewer sounded similar hah. I've been stalking probrewer myself. Doing homework, seeing what's out there for systems. A couple home brewers and I in atl have been talking about setting up shop and trying to figure out how to fund something small. Maybe 5-7bbl just to get things off the ground and test the waters. I have a couple backers lined up but not enough to cover the entire operation. Without the experience that you have though, I have to cross my fingers extra extra hard and let my beer speak for itself. We'll see. Good luck in your venture. Having moved from Birmingham a year ago, I know AL has a thirsty and growing craft market.

Click to expand...

LOL nice! Yes, the craft beer business in Alabama is booming and the Muscle Shoals area is not yet represented in the production numbers. I am trying to change that! Good luck to you on your venture as well!

There is a local brewery here that heats their strike/sparge water on the fly. They use electricity, though, and not steam.

weirdboy said:

There is a local brewery here that heats their strike/sparge water on the fly. They use electricity, though, and not steam.

Click to expand...

What is the knockout volume of their brewhouse?