BREWING
Braukon HopGun Pro The Braukon HopGun Pro is a tank with an agitator which slurries hop pellets into a large volume of beer for auto- mated in-line dosing into beer being moved from tank to tank. A range of sizes are available which can handle up to 500kg of hop pellets. The Sprinkman Portable Dry Hopping Skid and Schultz Rocket-S perform a similar duty to the HopGun Pro only using recirculation of the beer through the hops in place of the agitator. The Braukon Hopsteiner can be used to remove the hops from a beer dry hopped in tank, upstream from a lter or centrifugal separator. It prevents the downstream technology from slugs of high solids loading, reducing losses and the potential for blockages. It can also be used in tandem with the HopGun Pro to produce an aroma concentrate for addition to a non-dry hopped beer. The Hopsteiner works like an enclosed run down screen where beer with suspended dry hops is sprayed over the surface of the screen. The beer ows through the screen and the hop material is caught by it and falls to the bottom by gravity. Enclosing this process and providing a CO 2 purge minimises DO 2 pick up. Zip Technologies Hop Master Our nal dosing technology for static dry hopping is the Hop Master from Zip Technologies. The Hop Master is a pressure vessel with an agitator. After purging, pellets are added to the tank which is then pressurised to just under the pressure in the FV or CCV. Beer from FV/CCV is then run into the tank covering the hops. The agitator then mixes the pellets and the beer for the desired period of time before the contents of the tank are pushed back into the FV by top pressure. As you can envisage from the description, the Hop Master is a small unit with a capacity of 150 litres and around 25kg of hop pellets per ll. The direct manual addition technique is the cheapest (both CapEx and OpEx) option for adding hops so if you are not inclined to believe oxygen can damage beer avour stability when yeast is present and yields from FV are not a driving factor then this is probably your best option. Extraction of aroma is effective with all methods for pellet additions (markedly less so with whole cone) but beer losses can be very high (circa 20%). The contents of the tank can be processed through a centrifuge with a
Zip Technologies’ Hop Master
suitable solids capacity after rousing to reduce this loss. A candle or ZHF lter without kieselguhr can also be used. Inside the Sierra Nevada hop torpedo. (Photo: SeierraNevada)
Hop cannon A more exciting (exciting sounding at least) method of adding pellets for static dry hopping is the hop cannon. The hop cannon is a pressure vessel which can be purged with CO 2 and lled with hops. CO 2 is then used to build pres- sure in the tank which then blows the pellets into the tank of beer, normally through a vent line on the top of the vessel. Operation of the hop cannon consumes a lot of CO 2 compared to other technologies. Dry Hopnik The Rolec Dry Hopnik Dosing System is a simple tank and pump arrange- ment with a pair of pressure gauges to monitor the line pressure. Pellets are added to the tank and purged; the pellets are then drawn into a centrifugal chopper/grinder pump which is in a recirculating loop from the brewing vessel. The pump breaks up the pellets as it pumps so they are sent to the tank as particles. Dry Hopniks range from a pellet capacity of 20kg to 120kg. Several technologies have been brought to the marketplace recently which are so similar to the Dry Hopnic you could almost call them copies. Molson Coors operates Dry Hopniks at Sharp’s and Burtonwood Breweries to dry hop beer en route from fermentation to conditioning, replacing direct tank addition. Aaron McClure, Head Brewer of Sharp’s reports the process is cleaner, more consistent and less laborious than the old method and DO 2 pick up is greatly improved. Purging the system and keeping it anaerobic does consume and emit a lot of CO 2 so he says it’s not advisable to use in small, poorly ventilated cellars.
2. Dynamic Methods Torpedo
The Torpedo was developed in the mid-00s by Sierra Nevada Brewery to improve dry hopping effectiveness when using whole hops. It had been using the porous sack secured to the tank method above, but found it was time consuming. It was also nding the hops in the middle of the sacks were still dry, even after weeks in the beer so extrac- tion wasn’t what you’d call efcient. In the Torpedo whole hops are added to a perforated stainless basket which is sealed inside a cylindrical tank. After purging, beer is recirculated through the captive hops to dry hop it. The device was so successful they named a beer after it. A company called Hoplex are/were selling a device called a Hop Torpedo which is a great deal more similar to the Braukon Hop Gun than the original Torpedo.
Braukon HopGun (top left) and its many colleagues
october 2019 I BREWER AND DISTILLER INTERNATIONAL ● 43
i bd.org.uk
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