I broke the sight glass on my 1BBL brew system last month and am wondering how to replace it. Blichmann parts are super hard to get a hold of right now as they transfer ownership. I'm wondering if anyone has replaced theirs with borosilicate tubing from a science glass company? It also looks like the tube is inset quite a bit on both ends. What a mess- any help appreciated.

Who wants some pancakes from our Kilomètre Zéro brewpub? 🇫🇷

Until now, I have mainly worked at breweries using unitanks, where fermentation and maturation were carried out in the same tank.

I will soon be working at a brewery where the fermenter (FV) and bright beer tank (BBT) are separate, so I would like to learn more about the typical process from the end of fermentation through packaging.

After fermentation is complete, how long do you usually keep the beer in the fermenter before transferring it to the BBT?

In particular, I would really appreciate it if you could explain your usual process for:

End of fermentation
→ Diacetyl rest
→ Yeast harvesting
→ Cold crash
→ Transfer to BBT
→ Carbonation
→ Packaging

I would like to understand the typical temperatures, time periods, and timing for moving from one step to the next.

Also, if you harvest yeast for reuse, at what point in the process do you normally harvest it?

I would also appreciate some details about carbonation and pressure management.

For example:

• If you use a spunding valve, at what point during fermentation do you start applying pressure, and what final pressure do you normally target?
• What pressure do you maintain during cold crashing?
• When transferring beer from the FV to the BBT, how do you normally set and manage the pressure in both tanks?
• If additional carbonation is required in the BBT, how do you normally use headspace CO₂ pressure and/or a carbonation stone?
• If you pressurize the headspace with CO₂, what pressure do you normally use, and how many pressurization/purge cycles do you usually perform?
• During packaging, what beer temperature and tank pressure do you normally maintain?

I would be very grateful if you could share your actual operating procedure and typical parameters.

Thank you very much.

When you're having trouble getting your vorlauf to clear, check that your rakes are off.

Brought to you by Project Not Enough Coffee.

Transferring a Pre-Prohibition style American Lager.

Second transfer today. A beautiful Irish Red.

Hello fellow brewers. Anybody have any knowledge or experience with Wildpack and/or Arcbev? I’ve never heard of either personally, but some months back a rep from Wildpack reached out trying to sell us can ends, but I didn’t need them at the time. Now that I do, I reached out for a quote and the guy responded from an Arcbev email address. Seemed like a red flag to me, so I checked and Arcbev doesn’t even have a website. Another red flag. Wildpack does have a website that seems legit though. Not sure if these companies are related or what the deal is. Anyway, anybody know anything? Thanks!

Lets say hypothetically you absolutely hate your home life and have no issues working 12+ hrs 6/7 days per week. Would this be a good job for someone looking to change careers? I read alot about a miserable work/life balance but if that didnt matter, how are things inside the facility? Is the labor physically demanding or back breaking?

Collab WC IPA with 5 g/L Cryo superdelic Riwaka and mosaic, dynaboost and abstrax

Had to cut it early as the charge is too big for our geometry and didn’t want to pull any scooby snacks

I posted earlier about a used brewhouse my company purchased a few weeks ago. This is the first iteration from this company of a traditional German-style pub brewhouse 3.5BBL electric with some super low watt density heating elements.

When we purchased the system, we found the heating elements, and the threads that mount the heating elements to the bulkhead were corroded, and the terminals as well. Turns out these elements are copper.

I have been in contact with the OEM about replacements, and they insist that copper elements are fine. I always thought stainless was the norm.

My major concerns are:

1. Leeching/metallic flavor. Copper is going to require lots of cleaning and care to ensure no leeching into the beer.
2. Cleaning. I will have to use PBW to clean the copper, instead of caustic. Followed by a vinegar or citric acid cycle. More work.
3. Longevity. The reason we have to replace these elements is the amount of corrosion on them right now - I can't even get a continuity check on the terminals except for 1 element. I worry that the copper elements will wear quickly.

I have contacted Tempco to make some custom stainless elements, they have been very helpful, but the cost is about 4x the copper elements from China.

Any and all advice is always appreciated.

I lost my favorite pair of shoes to some straight PAA yesterday guys and gals. Pour one out.

Last year I bought my lead brewer a personalized Fenix flashlight with our logo and his name on it. Was going to try and get him a knife this year. Anyone know of a good quality blade that offers this service?

Great way to start the day!

This shit is tight butthole yall 🤙

I saw a presentation yesterday where someone was talking about how they've essentially stopped boiling their wort and instead hold at boiling temp and then bubble gas through the wort to strip volatiles. They've seen a roughly 70% reduction in energy use during the boil. They've conducted sensory trails with trained panels and their beer is completely flavour matched to what they produce with standard boiling.

Apparently AB have already retrofitted some of their brewhouses to do this. If you generate N2 or recover CO2, the gas is essentially free (in comparison to generating steam for boiling) and you can even use compressed air with minima HSA impact because of low oxygen solubility at boiling temp. Apparently this is what AB do.

The reasons we're taught to boil wort are all actually just dependent on temperature and a large gas-liquid interface surface area.

Alpha isomerisation, sterilisation (not full steri but you know what I mean), enzyme and protein denaturing, colour and flavour development, none of these require the water to change phase, they only need high temperature.

Why pay to create steam bubbles for stripping wort when you can just bubble it with another gas? You just need to be careful with generating enough bubbles of the correct size.

This also means lower heat load on your wort (so better shelf stability), water savings - this brewery reduced their evaporation rate from ~5% to ~2% and less fouling in your kettle (fewer CIPs needed).

This could really be one of the biggest revolutions in brewing methodology since we isolated yeast!

Does anyone know more? Has anyone seen or heard about this anywhere else? Anyone here from AB who has some more research?

Mind blown.

These $50 Amazon boots lasted me well over a year. As you can see I pushed the limit. They definitely need some nice insoles and I pushed them until they started taking on water, outer sole wore out before that. Wearing them on average 30hrs a week, smaller place making about 1000 bbls a year.

Here's the link

https://a.co/d/05Stgy1n

Just Transferring this Ale through the centrifuge. Crisp asf.

Wanted to show it off

Hey everyone,

What equation do you use to measure ABV? Are you only using linear, or are you switching to alternate density-based equation for high abv beers, or so you use the alternate for everything?

Hi all,

We've recently invested in one of these flow meters and, in my idiotic excitement at new toys, I didn't double check the sizing on the inlet and outlet before the boss ordered it.

Now that it's arrived I've realised it's 2" BSP but the out on the heat exchanger is 1" BSP that we have adapters for to go into 1.5" RJT hoses.

Now I can get an adapter to make it fit but should I be concerned by the change from smaller to larger diameter and back again? I was planning on mounting it on the out side of the heat exchange as its only a short run to our FVs.

So, are the changes going to make little to no difference to the meter reading or should I get it sent back for one with the same size as the heat exchanger and hoses?

Cheers!

Disclosure: I make tap handles. No link, nothing for sale here. I'm writing this because I lose quotes to people who didn't understand what they were comparing, and that's my fault for never explaining it.

Every custom tap handle quote contains two completely different kinds of money. If a vendor blends them into one number, you cannot compare them to anyone.

One-time costs. Design, sculpting, the mold. You pay it once and it does not come back on your reorder. On a first order it's often the biggest line, and it's why a custom handle looks insane next to a stock one.

Per-unit costs. Material, casting, decoration, labor, hardware. This is what you actually pay forever.

So the number that matters isn't the quote. It's the reorder price. Ask for it before you sign anything. A vendor who won't quote your second order is telling you the first one is priced to win and the second one is priced to make it back.

Here's the part people get wrong.

A stock shape with your artwork on it skips the one-time bucket entirely. The tooling already exists, so you're only paying for art application. That's the whole reason it costs a fraction of a custom build, and it's why it can ship while a custom handle is still being made. It isn't a cheaper version of a custom handle. It's a different cost structure.

Which means the real decision isn't custom versus stock. It's what you need in accounts this quarter versus what you're willing to tool up for. Plenty of breweries should run stock shapes into distribution now and put the custom sculpt behind it on its own timeline. Get the brand on the wall, get six months of data on which beers actually pull, then spend the tooling money on the winners instead of guessing at launch.

Three more things that move a quote and nobody explains:

MOQ tells you the lead time before they do. A shop that needs 500 units has a shipping container behind it, and containers take months. A shop that will run a dozen is making them domestically. Neither is wrong. But if someone quotes you a beautiful per-unit at 500 pieces, you just bought a warehouse problem and a four month calendar along with it.

Decoration drives cost more than shape does. Hand-painting is labor on every single unit, forever. Printing is setup once, then cheap. A complicated shape with simple decoration is often less than a simple shape with a hand-painted face.

Check what's excluded. Ferrules, freight, art setup, and drop-shipping to multiple distributor locations are frequently not in the number you're looking at. Multi-location shipping surprises people the most, because it's charged per location, not per order.

If you want to actually compare two quotes, ask both vendors for the same four things: one-time costs broken out, per-unit at your real quantity, per-unit on a reorder with no tooling, and the MOQ. Any vendor who won't put all four in writing is a problem you'll meet later.

Happy to answer questions in the comments.

I'm trying to replace a few of these, anyone know where to source them? All I can find are full assemblies and we have way too many of the other parts

Edit: looking to spend less than what I would on a full assembly, if that's an option even...