“As a cider maker who started as a home hobbyist making 5-gallon batches – I can say that there are a lot of lessons from scaling up that apply! First of all, and no surprise, it’s keeping things super clean – sanitize everything the cider touches! Specific to cider if you are pitching a specific strain of yeast vs a wild ferment, is how you get your juice ready to pitch. On a small scale sulfiting and then waiting 48 hours to pitch yeast is a common way of doing it. Schilling does not add any sulfites, so we flash pasteurize prior to pitch. Heating the juice to 150f for 15 minutes is a reasonable way to do that at home too if you do not want to use sulfites. The next step that’s specific to cider is how to preserve it once it’s done. If you plan to back-sweeten or stop the fermentation early, you will have residual sugar that will want to referment in the bottle. Schilling has a tunnel pasteurizer where the cans filled with cider get heated and held at a certain temperature that kills all bacteria and yeast that may be present in the can, creating long-term stability with no chemicals. This can also be done at home with some real attention to detail in a water bath. It is critical if your cider is carbonated that you do not overheat it, or it may explode. I would recommend a water bath at 150F for 15 minutes (15 minutes once the bath is at equilibrium). Do not go hotter and ensure your bottles are high-pressure rated with the correct headspace! Please take all possible precautions, as if done wrong, you can have exploding glass and hot water, which is a dangerous combo! There are chemical alternatives to this process that work, but to my palette degrades the taste.” Collin Schilling from Schilling Cider With complexities of managing chemicals, pressure vessels, boiling liquids, and electrical the devices simultaneously in homebrewing, what are your top recommendations for maintaining utmost safety without compromising the brewing quality?
that you can touch with your hand should be earthed. I have attached a photo showing how this can be done with a multimeter. What we want to check is that the earth terminal on the plug has “continuity” with the stainless steel vessel. Some multimeters will make a beeping sound when you join the two. Alternatively, if you check the resistance, the resistance should be close to zero (or less than a couple of ohms). Any decent manufacturer of electrical hardware should check this during the manufacturing process, but if you have made the brewery yourself or you purchased a second- hand device, I would definitely take the time to check this as it’s the single most important electrical check. 2. Ensure you have taken precautions to separate electrical and liquids. This may sound obvious, but you really have to look at the likely failure modes in a brew day. Things that are spilling over, boiling over, or hoses getting intentionally or accidentally disconnected. When this happens, and liquid spills, where is the liquid going to go? Try and keep AC power cables as far away from the wet areas or areas where the liquid is likely going to spill. 3. Use properly rated extension cables. Most brewery hardware draws a lot of amps. As a result, you need to make sure sufficient copper thickness is used, and you are not going to burn out your connections. Generally speaking, your household power cables will be made to a certain electrical standard. With that said, customers often have extension cables or double adaptors that are old, worn out, or simply insufficient thickness to do the job, resulting in fire risk or wasted power. Often, people are brewing outside and using cheap extension cables with thin internal wires. The longer and thinner the power cables the more loss you will have too. So customers who are using long and poor-quality extension cables may notice the brewery itself is not getting a vigorous boil, or it’s slow to heat up; this is also a telltale sign. If you feel the cable and it’s getting warm to the touch, this is also a good indication your extension cable is not of suitable thickness for the high-powered device, or possibly it’s too long. 4. GAS Safety: Probably the safest thing you can do is to simply get rid of gas altogether. Gas does have its safety concerns, and generally speaking, on a home scale, there is no reason to use
ERA CEO Justin Riemer (second from right) joins Schulich School of Engineering Dean Anders Nygren, Alberta Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz and Pathways Alliance CEO Kendall Dilling at the launch of a $50 million oil sands Tailings Technology Challenge on Jun. 18, 2025.
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“When it comes to safety, there are several substantial risks in brewing, and each can be addressed with appropriate steps. These are: • Safety with respect to chemicals: With chemicals, the main risk is getting them on your skin or in your eyes. Protective eyewear is a good idea when using acid, caustic, or oxidizing substances. All three types are common in the industry. At a minimum, some chemically resistant gloves are a good idea. • Safety with respect to handling hot liquids: Brewing requires us to use liquids that are boiling hot. The main risk when using these hot liquids is to make sure pots can’t fall over. We are designed with heavy weights and large amounts of liquid and hot grains. Once again, the chemically resistant gloves
are good as they also prevent you from getting burns to your hands. The other thing is to make sure you are always working on a flat-level surface. Castor wheels on devices can be risky, so if you want to use castor wheels, always lock them before using the brewery, and also make sure the castor wheels are substantially wider than the brewery/ fermenter/pot diameter. For instance, notice how these dolly wheels have a wider base than the brewery itself. This is ideal. • Electrical Safety: Obviously, when using high-amperage devices that contain liquid, there are some inherent dangers. Some things to keep an eye on are: 1. Ensure you have properly earthed vessels. For any electrical device, all metal parts of that electrical device
When cleaning a keg or fermentor, do not seal it up while it is hot without putting pressure on it. ”
112 SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • VOL 25 ISSUE 5
BUSINESS • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE 113
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