Trip Thunhorst’s Post

Let's talk about purchased CO2 in breweries 🫧 From the 55 breweries data I collected via Brew Resourceful last year, for the Brewery Sustainability Report 2023 I split all entries into 3 categories based on their total annual packaged volume (in hl). As breweries increase past 10k hl p/a, their purchased CO2 increases by 27%. Which is contrary to the economies of scale you could expect from growing a production facility. The all-important question here is, why? There are a few 'production' factors at play such as: 📈 Growth of production often happens very quickly in breweries, meaning volume cannibalises efficiency 🚦 Few 'small' brewers track their raw material consumptions, as at the time they do not represent large £ of stock. A couple of 'number' factors are at play such as: 🍾 As breweries grow they might look to bring small-pack packaging in-house, which requires substantially more CO2 🍺 The same as above, but for keg cleaning At least one 'human' factors at play such as: 😶🌫️ The larger the team grows, the further away the 'front line' brewers are aware of the costs of their materials (economically/environmentally) So why do 100k hl p/a breweries purchased CO2 intensity fall by 68%? Because they fight back. Generate your own nitrogen and replace 85%+ of your CO2 usage. Recapture the CO2 from your fermentations, and use that to replace your purchased CO2. Want to check out my full analysis and 4 other key metrics? Check out the Brewery Sustainability Report - 2023 here 👉 https://lnkd.in/et2sTTmD What are your thoughts on purchased CO2 in breweries?

Craft breweries face tough times. Over 25% are operating at a loss. Rising grain prices and utility costs exacerbate the issue. You can turn your brewery into a lean operation. Understanding efficiency is key. Here’s how to master it: **1. Smart Inventory Management** - Implement just-in-time inventory to save money. - A brewery can save $45,000 annually by optimizing grain delivery. - Partner with local breweries for bulk purchases. **2. Leverage Technology** - Use modern brewery management software to save time and money. - A successful brewery cut 20 hours of labor weekly with better software. - Implement energy management systems to optimize utility usage. **3. Optimize Operations** - Automate processes to improve consistency and reduce labor costs. - One Michigan brewery reduced errors by 98% with an automated canning line. - Implement a preventive maintenance schedule for equipment. **4. Diversify Revenue Streams** - Explore taproom events and merchandise to increase income. - Dogfish Head Brewery expanded into restaurants and hotels to boost profits. - Look for creative partnerships to enhance your brand. **5. Focus on Cash Flow Management** - Negotiate better payment terms with suppliers. - Plan for seasonal fluctuations in income. - Consider alternate revenue streams to avoid financial strain. Every dollar saved boosts your growth potential. Efficient operations lead to long-term success in brewing. You don’t just brew beer; you build a resilient business. Transform how you operate and thrive in this challenging market. Source: - https://lnkd.in/g8_6Hid5

Brewing a sustainable future: How automation can reduce your brewery's environmental impact. Though the craft beer industry has grown immensely over the past decade, its success is coupled with significant challenges, particularly with regards to skyrocketing energy costs and growing ESG responsibilities. Water usage, energy consumption, and waste generation are all areas where breweries can strive for greater sustainability. The good news is — innovative and automated brewing technology is helping breweries work towards a more sustainable future. How? Automation is revolutionising the brewing process by taking the guesswork out of it. These systems constantly monitor and optimise brewing parameters, leading to a significant decrease in energy consumption. This translates to a smaller carbon footprint and lower utility bills for breweries. For example, Frigid.Cloud's pulse chilling optimises heat transfer and improves the efficiency of compressor operation in glycol chillers, and ultimately reduces energy usage. Solar thermal storage, on the other hand, harnesses renewable energy by integrating solar panels to store energy in the thermal mass of fermenters and glycol holding tanks, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Smiley Brewing in Melbourne is the perfect example of the impact that automation can have. By implementing Frigid.Cloud's pulse cooling module, they've slashed their daily energy consumption by 30 kWh. This translates to an annual reduction of 5.5 tons of carbon emissions–that's roughly equivalent to taking an average passenger car off the road for a year . Between October and November, their electricity consumption decreased by an average of 30.1 kilowatts, dropping down to 85.2 kilowatts between February and March. This reduction in power usage translates to an estimated monthly cost saving of around $340. As the craft beer industry continues to navigate an ever-changing landscape, automation and sustainable brewing practices will undoubtedly play a key role in ensuring a brighter future for both brewers and our planet.

Hepworth Brewery, based in Pulborough, is using a Greensteam heat pump, developed by Surbiton start-up Futraheat, to deliver low-carbon heat to fuel the brewing process. Unlike most heat pumps, which deliver hot water up to around 80°C, the Futraheat heat pump can produce steam up to 130°C – vital for the brewing industry and believed to be a first for the UK. Hepworth Brewery expects the new heat pump to reduce the energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with wort boiling by up to 90%, while lowering fuel bills by up to 40%, with potential to roll out the technology across the whole brewing process. Heat, delivered through high temperature steam pipes, is a core component of brewing, and many other industrial processes, and is usually delivered by boilers running on gas or fuel oil. With its new system, Hepworth Brewery can now recycle waste vapour from the brewing process, normally vented to atmosphere, and boost it via Futraheat’s heat pump to deliver useful steam back to the brewery at 130°C. This will reduce the brewer’s reliance on a CO2-emitting oil boiler and enable it to switch almost all of its heat requirement for wort boiling to the electrically powered heat pump, which runs on a green electricity tariff. There is potential for the pilot project to be scaled up site-wide to offset almost all of the fossil fuel generated heat used at the brewery. The key to the heat pump is a patented turbo compressor, known as TurboClaw, which sits at the heart of the Greensteam system and can boost temperatures by up to 60 degrees. The video below explains how it works. Futraheat believes that its technology can be applied to many industries beyond brewing.

As the sun rises over the misty hills where hops grow tall, the world of craft brewing is in a constant state of flux. 🌞🌱 From the meticulous blending of flavors to the precise timing of fermentation, every aspect of the brewing process demands a high level of attention to detail. 🍺🔩 Yet, amidst the chaos of managing inventory, tracking orders, and coordinating staff, many breweries struggle to stay afloat, let alone thrive. The solution, however, lies not in a mystical elixir but in the mundane and often overlooked—labor cost control software for your corner shop. 🏪 By embracing technology, breweries can streamline operations, optimize labor costs, and focus on what they do best: crafting exceptional beer. Discover how efficient labor scheduling can revolutionize your brewery's efficiency and profitability. 📊 #CraftBrewing #LaborManagement #EfficiencyInnovation

Brewing beer produces a by-product known as spent grain, a mixture of malt and hops residue. Traditionally, transporting this material has been an energy-intensive task, requiring substantial amounts of compressed air. However, a revolutionary system called Smart Air Injection (SAI) is transforming this process, offering a more efficient and environmentally friendly solution for breweries. SEEPEX https://lnkd.in/ggEV2SRv

Pipeline design is an important aspect of beer brewing equipment for both small and large breweries.Therefore, it is particularly important to choose to cooperate with a large beer equipment manufacturer, because experienced senior engineers can help you design and optimize the piping design of your brewery. Good piping design has the following advantages: 1. Efficient Flow and Process Control Minimizes Pressure Loss: Well-designed pipelines reduce friction and pressure loss, ensuring that liquids like wort, water, and beer flow smoothly through the system. This is vital for maintaining consistent production times and preventing bottlenecks. Optimizes Pump Efficiency: Proper pipeline sizing and design minimize the workload on pumps, reducing energy consumption and extending the lifespan of the pumps. 2. Hygiene and Sanitation Prevents Contamination: Smooth, seamless piping with minimal joints and connections reduces the risk of microbial contamination. Clean-In-Place (CIP) systems rely on well-designed pipelines to ensure thorough cleaning and sanitation. Avoids Dead Legs: Dead legs or areas in pipelines where liquid can stagnate are breeding grounds for bacteria. Proper pipeline design eliminates or minimizes dead legs, maintaining hygiene standards. 3. Beer Quality and Consistency Preserves Beer Integrity: Pipes made of materials like stainless steel are non-reactive, preventing any off-flavors that might be introduced by contact with unsuitable materials. Proper design also avoids excessive turbulence, which can introduce oxygen and lead to oxidation, affecting beer flavor and shelf life. Maintains Temperature Control: Insulated pipelines or glycol-jacketed systems help maintain the proper temperature of the wort or beer as it moves through the brewery, crucial for flavor consistency and fermentation control. 4. Scalability and Flexibility Facilitates Expansion: A well-thought-out pipeline design can accommodate future expansion, allowing for additional fermenters, tanks, or processing stages without major redesigns. Allows Process Flexibility: Modular and flexible pipeline systems enable easy reconfiguration for different brewing processes, such as switching between different beer styles or brewing techniques. 5. Cost Efficiency Reduces Waste: Efficient pipeline design minimizes product loss during transfers, cleaning, and other processes, leading to better yield and reduced waste. Lowers Maintenance Costs: Well-designed pipelines require less maintenance and are easier to clean, reducing downtime and associated costs. 6. Environmental Impact Efficient Use of Resources: By optimizing the flow of liquids, breweries can reduce their overall water and energy consumption, contributing to more sustainable operations. Minimizes Wastewater: Proper design reduces the volume of product left in pipes after transfers, which in turn reduces the amount of cleaning and wastewater generated.

The GEA LAUTERSTAR 2.0 revolutionizes brewhouse efficiency, cutting lautering times to 70 minutes, achieving 98.7% extraction, and enabling up to 14 brews daily. In the brewhouse, the capacity of the lauter tun time and again proves to be a bottleneck for productivity and efficiency. Large international breweries in particular are looking for ways to unburden the lautering process: "Brewers have grown used to filtration taking a lot of time. We scrutinized these processes and found that we can lauter faster if the filter cake can be prevented from clogging. The GEA LAUTERSTAR 2.0 achieves a productivity increase of ten percent and an extract efficiency of 98.7%," explains Peter Sterk, Product Manager for Brewhouse Technology at GEA. Additionally, the new lauter tun is smaller, which results in material savings of ten percent. Technical Innovations for faster lautering processes To increase the efficiency of the LAUTERSTAR 2.0, GEA optimized the geometry and drainage points of th

Discover 10 groundbreaking automations to revolutionise your craft brewery operations today with Pabbly Connect assistance

Do you see the problem the Brewing industry has with water? 😔 We are all aware that overpopulation, a lack of investment and climate change have resulted in water shortages across the UK and EU 🌍 Brew Resourceful's chart reveals the distribution of water intensity (L/L) among 70 breweries in the UK and EU. I am sharing this to highlight a critical issue - too many breweries are using too much water. 🌍 The Cost of Inefficiency to the Planet First, let's look at what the inefficiency looks like in real terms. Despite an industry median of 6.6 L/L, 37 out of 70 breweries are exceeding this benchmark. If those 37 breweries were to meet the industry standard this would represent: - 1.13 million hectoliters of water saved every year 💧 - Which would provide drinking water for 6.3 million people for an entire year, every year. 🥛 - ~ 23 tonnes of CO2e every year 🌱 - £170k saved in wasted utilities every year 💰 🔎 Key Takeaways From the Dataset and Chart What about the other 9,930 breweries?! So this dataset is the largest for brewery water intensity in the UK and Europe. And the numbers you saw above are based on just 70 breweries. So if we were to get hold of everyone's data, how big would this problem really be...... Is There Even a Standard?! The water intensity for some breweries is more than 6x higher than others, with values pushing up to nearly 20 litres of water per litre of beer packaged. But the standard deviation from the lowest to the industry standard is just 1.2 L/L whereas above the industry standard this over doubles to 2.5 L/L So to me, if you don't know you intensity, it can spiral out of control pretty quickly. 🤔 What Do The Best Breweries Do That The Others Don't? Measure, Measure, Measure 📏 Every brewery is different, but one thing is constant in every brewery below 6.6 L/L - They all take monthly meter readings and they all divide this by their packaged volume. Benchmark 📊 Once measured, benchmarking internally and externally. My company Brew Resourceful will benchmark your data against the live industry standard and breweries of a similar size. For free. Reduce 📉 Now you can start to reduce. I have written blogs on the Brew Resourceful and I have also helped reduce breweries like Northern Monk water consumption by millions of litres a year. See the case study I wrote on this here -> https://lnkd.in/erQixQUv How do you think we can stop water wastage in the brewing industry? #Sustainability #BrewingIndustry #WaterConservation #EnvironmentalResponsibility #InnovationInBrewing #ClimateAction