When the craft brewing boom started really heating up, chiller manufacturers found themselves up against a newly revealed set of challenges, including being asked to manufacture brewery specific chiller units that would not only operate at lower than the standard chiller temperatures but do it consistently and reliably. Pro Refrigeration was on the forefront of that challenge, manufacturing their first brewery chiller system for a small brewpub in Seattle. From that day on, craft breweries are credited with pushing the developmental improvements and changes that companies like Pro Refrigeration have applied across their entire product lines in order to serve clients in a multitude of markets.
Pro Chiller Systems
“Thirty years ago, chillers were basically morphed air conditioning systems built from separately scavenged or acquired parts all retrofitted together to form a Frankenstein like system that was semi-reliable and easy to repair when the inevitable breakdowns occurred,” said Jim VanderGiessen Jr., CEO and Co-Founder of Pro Chiller Systems. “They were generally manufactured to provide constant loads, but then craft breweries came along and presented a unique situation with new needs and challenges for chiller manufacturers. Breweries tend to operate under cooling loads that greatly fluctuate within very short time frames. And as those loads fluctuate, the flow rates change with them. Additionally, common sense tells us that breweries just naturally have to run more production during warmer months, so they need a cooling system that is both consistent and reliable under harsh temperatures and challenging weather situations.”
“I like to say that in today’s craft brewing business, chillers have become the most important and integral part of the brewery, touching and imprinting the brewing process in every way,” says VanderGiessen Jr. “Chillers help reduce the high heat that is generated from the processing of the wort, cooling it down from two hundred plus degrees Fahrenheit to the industry standard seventy degrees Fahrenheit for fermentation, and then they continue to help by controlling the temperatures all through the fermentation process in order to keep the yeast in its most proficient form. Chillers are also used for crash cooling, bringing temperatures down from seventy degrees Fahrenheit to as close to thirty two degrees Fahrenheit as possible within an industry standard twenty four hour time span. Chillers are needed for cold conditioning and maintaining the temperatures of the product until the final packaging. All of these processes and more can generate heat that needs to be countered, including those breweries that use a centrifuge system or those that have heat exchangers involved before their packaging machinery. Some breweries use chillers to service their cold rooms used for beer storage as well. Chillers touch today’s craft breweries in almost every conceivable way.”
Pro Chiller Systems decided to do something more than just use a modified air conditioning to try and match brewery’s needs. They instead ventured into glycol chillers that were able to cool to twenty five to twenty eight degrees Fahrenheit. They also built those chillers with compressors ranging from just three quarter horsepower up to and surpassing several hundred horsepower for the big-time, high production breweries. Half of their packaged and custom chiller unit sales are now directly to the end user, meaning the breweries themselves, and the balance of their sales are to the systems people contracted to build the breweries. Pro Refrigeration gets directly involved with the customer and can recommend a total brewery package system or they can build custom units based on the results of load analysis and the client’s current and future plans to expand, grow, or start additional product lines.
“The only demand from chiller technology back when we started doing this was that the machinery is reliable and durable, working when and how they were supposed to work, says VanderGiessen Jr. “Now the leading driver is efficiency. Because of that expectation, we started improving the chiller units with things like electronic expansion valves and high efficiency evaporators. Another big, almost industry standard expectation is remote monitoring of the equipment and its operating status. In fact, most clients assume that remote monitoring is a given on new units. We also push for remote service as a value added, newer option to go along with remote monitoring of our units. By allowing our team to provide remote servicing of your equipment, we’ll frequently become aware of any problems or issues occurring with the chillers before the client or customer notices the issue. This kind of proactive technology eliminates major breakdowns and loss of product while providing complete peace of mind for the customer. In compressor technology specifically, there are more screw drive technologies available in the larger units, eighty horsepower and above. There are also high efficiency fan motors available to help maximize performance while saving energy. But other interesting developments include variable frequency drives, new types of refrigerants and utilization of heat reclamation for building or water heating within the brewery. It really is still an exciting time with more improvements on the horizon.”
Thermal Care, Inc.
Bob Smith, Director of Product Management, and John Grant, Industrial Markets Manager of Thermal Care Inc, are very adamant about the importance of reliability, durability, efficiency and serviceability of beer chillers. Thermal Care Inc prides itself on hitting all of these points, capping it with a 24/7/365 service team always ready to help craft breweries stay up and running if and when needed.
“We know that chillers affect every facet of the craft brewery, so reliability and consistency are essential,” said Grant. “To realize that initiative, it’s important as the customer to have access to a dedicated and qualified service team that is nearby, immediately available and capable of quickly solving and repairing any issues to prevent the product from going bad due to a malfunction of the chiller system.”
Thermal Care offers indoor and outdoor portable style glycol chillers for craft breweries, with ranges from one ton up through forty ton for breweries and many other industries. It’s not always readily apparent what size or type of chiller is best for a particular situation, but Grant says it’s all about the information that they collect to help them recommend the proper unit.
“The whole process of brewing creates heat that has to be controlled, so we ask critical questions to determine the proper size of chiller for each specific brewing operation,” said Grant. “Do you cook your wort? You’ll need wort cooling. Then, after the fermentation process is completed, crash cooling begins, chilling the beer from seventy degrees Fahrenheit down to about thirty four degrees Fahrenheit. The crash cooling phase can take different lengths of time depending on the style of beer being created but is generally considered to be a twenty-four-hour period. Heat is created by the movement of the fermented liquids to the bright tanks as well. How many bright tanks are we looking at in the brewery? We need information on the numbers and sizes of the bright barrel storage and final cold storage. We look at the number of active fermenters that are in operation at any given time. Breweries will typically have more available fermenters than what they are actually using at one time simply because of the constant cleaning and janitorial functions of the business. Do you have plans for more production, increased capacity or product offerings? This is all information that will impact your needs regarding chiller sizing and capacity, both for today and in the future.”
“The bright tank storage draws the least load from the chillers,” said Grant, “Followed by the crash cooling phase and then the cool storage holding before the packaging process. Depending on which processes are going on in a brewery at any given time, the demand load and energy consumption needed from the chillers will change, so chiller size and type is critical to cost savings and efficiency.”
Thermal Care is one of the few companies that currently offer variable speed technology in their brewery chillers, meaning the units will automatically adjust to the load demands of the brewery at different phases of the brewing cycle and only use enough energy to meet those demands. This feature saves the client money, resources and machinery wear and tear. With a standard fixed speed compressor, the chiller will run at capacity speed whether servicing the low demand bright tanks or the high demand cooling storage tanks. Thermal Care’s NQV series variable speed chillers work only as hard as needed to maintain optimum performance while simultaneously reducing energy consumption. The units recognize the cooling demand load and adjust the compressor speed to operate at peak efficiency and temperature control. According to Thermal Care, studies have shown that just a twenty percent reduction in compressor motor speed can result in a whopping fifty one percent savings in energy consumption
“That energy consumption is a major expense of a craft brewery,” said Grant. “Microbreweries are especially costly to get up running and to operate, and because customers don’t want to regularly drink expensive beer, it is generally not considered a value added product, meaning the profit is simply not great. The brewery has to conserve dollars in other ways, and that can be done with our variable speed chillers. There are companies selling chillers that use digital scroll technology, claiming that they can get the same results as variable speed chillers, but it really isn’t the same. Digital scroll technology is not the same as variable speed, and can actually use thirty-seven percent more energy under the same loads as variable speed chillers.”
“Variable speed technology and efficiency IS the future,” says Grant. “And we are already there.”