CASE STUDY: BREWER FOCUSES ON LOW OXYGEN PICKUP & HYGEINE
Bavarian brewer Acrobrau boosts beer ‘taste stability’ with new Krones filler
Based in the Lower Bavarian village of Moos, Acrobrau employs 70+ staff and produces around 160,000 hecoliters of beer per year for sale within Lower Bavaria, mainly, but also internationally.
Investing in a Krones filler, bottler inspector and conveyors, Fichtel (on the left in the photo below) and his colleague, brewmaster Gunther Breitenfellner (to the right) attached particular importance to low oxygen pickup – since compounds therein contribute to staling flavors – in the beer and hygiene.
Krones said the new filler, bottle inspector and conveyors were all installed under severe space constraints – while there was extremely tight deadline to deliver, build and commission the machinery.
- BREWERY FACTS
- 1567: First reference to Schlossbrauerei (castle brewery) on site
- 1826: First experiments made to create Weissbier (wheat beer)
- 1887: Konrad count of Preysing introduces mechanical processes into the brewery.
- 1910 First 'Helles' pale lager is brewed
- 2004: New wort boiler installed to cut boiling energy consumption by 15%
- 140,000 hectoliters sold in Lower Bavaria, throughout Germany, in Europe, the US and Asia
The Modulfill HES filler is a probe-controlled filling system without a vent tube; its tubular ring bowl has 96 filling valves and an 18-head crowner – it can also be retrofitted with a capper.
With an output of 33,000 500ml NRW bottles/hour the machine is designed to handle both top-and bottom-fermented beers as well as alcohol-free types.
Double pre-evacuation with CO2 flushing minimizes oxygen values, to minimize headspace air and stabilize beer taste, while warm filling at temperatures of 15C+ is possible without reducing output.
The Modufill HES pressurizes and vents bottles via two separate gas paths, which prevents liquid passing from the filled bottle into the pressurization channel – to improve filling stability and hygiene.
Krones insists that during pressurization no residual liquid can penetrate into empty bottles, thus preventing unwanted fobbing and hygiene risks during filling; finally, hygiene is ensured by automatic cold gush-type jetting of all microbiologically relevant machine components.
Acrobrau has also invested in a Checkmat FM-HF bottle inspector that checks filled bottles for over- and under-fills; with filling valve and crowner head assignment it also incorporates a closure monitoring feature and logo detection for the crown.
The brewery has also invested in a new Siemens S7 control system to regulate all the bottle conveyers between the packer and the unpacker – this integrates the machines and conveyor systems. The empty bottle inspector and filler are monobloc-synchronised to optimize buffering times between the machines.
