What Would Be Practical Beer Loss When Brewing Natural Beers

what would be practical beer loss when brewing natural beers --- no industrial enzymes and quality enhancer additives

As a craft brewery equipment manufacturer, I was always be asked by beer loss during brewing in our beer equipment. We usually give a general range of beer loss and how our brewery tanks are designed to complement part of the loss. It is beyond my knowledge to give a more practical answer because my expert is craft beer equipment instead of beer. Anyway, we must get practical data and make necessary improvement in our beer brewing equipment. Finally, i found some comments who are talking about the same thing. Allow me to list the comments here and share with all other brew masters. Thanks for all writers of these comments below.Question is asked by Mr. Benson who is the Team Leader at The Institute of Innovation & Creative Management

Beer Loss Comment 1:

By Alexander

It all depends on the scale of the operations and what technical capabilities you have. I would suggest around 0.5% - 2% losses in the Brewhouse, then around 4% - 6% in Fermentation (mainly due to yeast growth). Then a loss of 1% - 3% in Maturation (or on the way to maturation via centrifuges). Finally 1% - 3% in Packaging. So in total it can vary between 5.5% to 15%. There are a lot of effective tools, practices and technologies available to reduce beer losses but first and foremost it is best to create a process map and identify any gaps to focus on initially. In top breweries total losses can even be as low as 3%, it all depends on your objective, as there will be quality vs. cost implementations.

Beer Loss Comment 2:

Ask by satya from Brewer at Rhino Agencies Ltd

can we use adjuncts while brewing without quality enhancer additives?

Answer by Alexander as below:

Definitely. Personally I prefer the lighter beers brewed with rice and maize grits, rather than beers brewed according to the German purity law of 1516. These beers also do not need any flavour enhancing additives. If you are using good quality malt and provided you have got an adequate brewing process, you can get away with a very high percentage of adjuncts, without the need, of additional process aids. The only adjunct which I am not a fan of is unmalted barley - but not because of final product quality. Even with the use of glucanase enzymes, unmalted barley will give problems in Filtration. I believe this is because beta-glucans are not as easily accessible by glucanase enzymes in unmalted barley as they are in malted barley. Therefore a large proportion of these get carried forward to Filtration. This will blind your filters much quicker than beer brewed without unmalted barley. So I believe it is a false economy to use unmalted barley. In terms of final product quality there is not much of a difference in this case. Of course there are many other adjuncts but I do not have any hands on experience with these. Perhaps someone else can tell us more...Beer Loss Comment 3:By James who is Production Manager at Brooklyn BreweryI agree with Alexander that it can vary widely depending on the specifics of your brewery processes. Firstly, though, you have to decide if you want to measure beer loss in terms of volume lost, or as a percentage of extract lost. This will depend on whether or not you are brewing at high gravity or sales gravity as well as how many different products/recipes you make. If you brew at sales gravity and don't dilute your beer towards the end of the process, and you make only one or two different products, then I think measuring in terms of volume of beer lost is acceptable. However, if you brew at high gravity and dilute the beer later on, or if you make a variety of products that have different starting or finishing gravities, or even different malt bills, then you will want to measure losses as percentage of extract. This will allow you to keep a single figure throughout the prices without having to adjust for beer dilution prior to packaging. However, when measuring in terms of extract loss you will have to first devise a theoretical minimum based on recipe parameters, for example if you brew a beer with an unusually high finishing gravity or low attenuation rate, you don't want those to give you the false sense of high extract losses, but they should be taken into account when all other avenues of improvement have been exhausted.

Furthermore, the final figures Alexander gives (5.5%-15%, which I agree with) vary due to the huge variations within minor aspects of the brewing process that often get overlooked. For example, does the process call for purging/chasing beer out of the pipes/mains with water (most commonly de-aerated liquor) after transfers and movements? Is there some kind of a "spare beer" recovery process whereby trub/bottoms/sediment left in the bottom of vessels is further processed to recover the liquid portion? These would include filtration of the sediment left at the bottom of maturation vessels, but also applying waste yeast through centrifugation after cropping. These processes use no enzymes or additives, but can be viewed by some as "unnatural", however they do limit beer loss significantly. Lastly, and possibly most importantly, can the instruments being used to compile the data be 100% trusted? This question mainly focuses on flow-meters and internal level gauges (which, in my experience, both require a fair amount of servicing) as they will be where the data originates from, and if they are inaccurate then your conclusions will be, too.

All of these contribute to the variety of beer loss seen throughout different breweries, and therefore the beer loss will be a factor of size and scale, specific recovery processes, and transfer/movement controls. Unfortunately, beer loss seems to be one of those things where the answer is "whatever works for your brewery." However, some key guidelines (I think) would be:>15% loss: Worrying. Start by investigating where beer is going down the drain, literally, from filters, purges, and especially in packaging.12%-15% loss: Not quite worrying, but actions should be taken. See if some kind of beer recovery system can be installed. Also, look into the post-transfer purges that will ensure all of the beer makes it into the vessels.8%-12% loss: Pretty good. If time and manpower allow, perhaps just form some project groups to investigate specific areas to see if efficiency can be improved.

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