For a company, beer loss means financial loss, and even small losses, when accumulated over time, can lead to significant waste. Therefore, minimizing loss is one of the most important tasks for a brewery.
Here are some key areas of beer loss and methods to reduce it:
All Leaks and Spray Points Are Sources of Loss:
In a brewery, some containers or pipelines may leak wort or beer. If each spot leaks one drop (0.05ml) per second, the loss over a year would be: 0.05 X 60 X 60 X 24 X 365 = 1,576,800 (ml) = 1,576 (L) = 15.76 (hL). Therefore, it's important to regularly replace seals and eliminate all leaks and spray points.
Hop Residue Retains Wort:
Wort can get trapped in hop residues during separation, and minimal washing can help reduce this loss. For this reason, people have largely shifted from using natural hops to using hop pellets and hop extracts. When using natural hops, they are ground and the hop residues are collected for reuse.
Wort in Coagulates:
Wort recovery from coagulated residues is incomplete using wort recovery devices. However, returning the coagulates to the filtration tank allows for almost complete recovery with minimal loss.
Foam Caps Contain Extracts:
If a container is overfilled, foam may spill over, leading to unnecessary loss. The foam cap contains beer, and if care is not taken when skimming it, it could result in the loss of 10-20L per 100 hL. In this case, placing the skimmed foam into a container to allow the beer to settle can reduce the loss.
Yeast Traps Beer After Fermentation:
Yeast sediment traps beer, and the looser the sediment, the greater the beer loss. If the yeast is not washed and reused in the next fermentation, the loss will be smaller, as the unabsorbed beer will not be wasted. Therefore, using dry yeast as much as possible is recommended.
Filtration Losses:
Using diatomaceous earth filters with pre-coating results in a 4% to 0.8% loss. Tank filters have a smaller loss (around 0.3%) because they can be purged with CO2.
Filling Losses:
Modern filling equipment in the bottling department leads to less loss compared to older equipment. Modern equipment results in a beer loss of 2% to 0.4%.
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