how the big boys do it?

[dmbhawker]

so i am relatively new to home-brewing and have been going on a bunch of local brewery tours and what not trying to learn from the big boys. i was wondering how the larger breweries and brewpubs are able to put out such a good product in such a short time. do they skip the conditioning period that i go through as a home-brewer?

 

[El_Exorcisto]

Most force carbonate their beer, which instantly knocks 2-3 weeks off the normal homebrewer's schedule. I know Cooperstown Brewery literally bottles on day 4, and their beer is LOADED with diacetyl.

 

[Seven]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/ho...rewers-get-their-beers-stores-so-fast-217921/

 

[Clonefarmer]

so i am relatively new to home-brewing and have been going on a bunch of local brewery tours and what not trying to learn from the big boys. i was wondering how the larger breweries and brewpubs are able to put out such a good product in such a short time. do they skip the conditioning period that i go through as a home-brewer?

Besides keeping the beer on a tighter schedule. Moving right after fermentation has ceased and carbing quickly. They can use the time that the beer sits at the distributor, liquor store or bar as conditioning time.

 

[kanzimonson]

I use 1968 in most of my ales for a lot of reasons, but two of its best traits are quick fermenting and super flocculation. For an average strength beer (say 1.060 or less), I can frequently go from grain to glass in 6-10 days. Other than using gelatin, crash cooling, and using the quick carb method, the yeast is really responsible for the speed.

I definitely admit that my beers get better after a couple weeks in the keg, but it's fun to taste this evolution. For breweries, by the time the beer hits the shelf I understand that it's probably 4-5 weeks old minimum, just due to shipping, storage, distributor nonsense.

I really try to mimic commercial breweries as much as I can, and getting the product out quickly is a goal of mine.

 

[Calder]

They know their ingredients. They pitch the optimum quantity of yeast into the perfect environment. They hold their temperatures steady, usually the max they can get away with, filter the beer to clear and then bottle/keg. For most, when bottling, they inject the CO2 into the beer.

Time is money. They invest lots of money to figure out the quickest way to make the product. The quicker they can make it, the more they can make.

 

[Captain Damage]

Commercial brewers have pressure and temperature issues we don't deal with as homebrewers. Their yeasts are really in a very different environment from ours. Someone somewhere, who (probably) knows better than me said that the pressure in an nn-barrel system allows commercial brewers to ferment at higher temperatures without negative effects. However, those same pressures and temperatures require them to draw the yeast off the beer as soon as fermentation is finished, especially since they typically reuse their yeast a few times.

 

[Clonefarmer]

Commercial brewers have pressure and temperature issues we don't deal with as homebrewers. Their yeasts are really in a very different environment from ours. Someone somewhere, who (probably) knows better than me said that the pressure in an nn-barrel system allows commercial brewers to ferment at higher temperatures without negative effects. However, those same pressures and temperatures require them to draw the yeast off the beer as soon as fermentation is finished, especially since they typically reuse their yeast a few times.

AFAIK commercial breweries ferment at typical fermentation temps. The issue is when a volume of yeast that large ferments it creates allot of heat. The fermentors are often glycol jacketed to avoid this problem.

 

[Saccharomyces]

There are several factors that they have that work in their favor:

They have big glycol-jacketed conical tanks. You can get smaller versions of these as a homebrewer if you have the megabucks to spend on Blichmann bling bling and a refrigerator big enough to maintain good temp control. Even then, the osmotic pressure in a 15bbl+ tank will allow for warmer fermentation temperatures while producing the same ester profile. Many commercial breweries on the west coast ferment their ales at 72-74*F with ester levels that are about the same for a homebrewer using a similar yeast at 66-68*F. You can mimick this effect at home by fermenting in Sanke kegs (see the pressure fermentation thread). I have done it, and I can confirm it works, even for lagers. Something else you can do, is warm the beer to the mid 70's at the end of fermentation so it will condition more quickly. Think of it as a diacetyl rest, even for ales. After conditioning, the tanks allow them to crash cool the beer to around 32*F to drop out the yeast. If you have a good fridge you can do this but it will take longer for the yeast to settle out due to the geometry of a carboy/bucket.

Another factor, is they pitch lots of yeast, and most often, the yeast is a house strain which has fermented many batches of the same beer before under the same conditions. The yeast we pitch as homebrewers is used to the lab conditions where it was stored and propagated , and most of us do not pitch at the same rate as commercial breweries. Even if you pitch at the same rate as a commercial brewery, we homebrewers don't brew several batches a week of the same beer, and keep re-pitching the same yeast over and over into the same wort. The yeast will simply take longer to do their job.

Don't forget that probably 90% of the commercial breweries filter their beer. This is especially true for breweries that bottle condition their beers, since they almost always filter out the primary yeast and re-pitch a bottle conditioning strain. If a beer has been properly conditioned on the yeast for 2-3 weeks, filtering the beer and force carbonating it (which I frequently do) results in a bright beer that is ready to drink about 2 weeks earlier than an unfiltered beer. The breweries that don't filter their beers almost always use a highly flocculant strain such as WLP007 as their house yeast.

 

[Clonefarmer]

Even then, the osmotic pressure in a 15bbl+ tank will allow for warmer fermentation temperatures while producing the same ester profile. Many commercial breweries on the west coast ferment their ales at 72-74*F with ester levels that are about the same for a homebrewer using a similar yeast at 66-68*F.

Interesting. All the breweries I've been to, I've never heard this before. The fermentor temps are usually set 65-68.

Edit: I suppose that's why there is a difference between beer fermented in tall, narrow conicals and short, wide fermentors.