Dosing in brewing

The brewing process requires accurate dosing of different chemicals at various stages. These can be direct as part of the beer production process itself, for example flavors or colors, or as part of the system cleaning regime such as clean-in-place (CIP).

Flavor and color dosing is important to brewers to ensure that the correct taste, aroma and appearance of the beer is achieved. This usually takes place prior to fermentation but can also occur at the final stages before packaging (bottling, canning, kegging etc.).

Ensuring quality with accurate, reliable dosing technology

Customers expect a given beer to always taste, smell and look the same. To achieve the desired quality, ingredients and chemicals need to be dosed very accurately to ensure consistent beer flavor and appearance.

Peristaltic additive dosing pumps from Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Solutions (WMFTS) are very accurate and repeatable. The flow rate is not affected by variations in fluid viscosity or pipework sizes. This avoids the need to overdose costly flavors or colors to ensure an adequate amount is added, thereby minimising costs and maintaining quality.

The additives used to control flavor and color can be very viscous, or at the very least vary in thickness, causing many dosing pumps to experience flow variation or limitation. In some cases valves or seals can get stuck leading to increased maintenance and downtime. Some additives are also abrasive which can lead to wear and premature dosing pump failure. WMFTS’s Bredel and Certa flavor and color dosing pumps can handle this challenge because of their excellent suction and viscosity handling capability.

For the dosing of CIP chemicals, accuracy is again very important. Chemicals such as sodium hydroxide, peracetic acid and soda ash are pumped through the brewing process pipework and equipment to ensure the necessary high levels of hygiene are met. Under or over dosing of these chemicals can lead to ineffective cleaning and increased costs due to additional cleaning cycles or wasted chemicals. Because of WMFTS’s Qdos and Bredel CIP dosing pump accuracy, this is not a problem.

Some cleaning chemicals are aggressive so operator safety is paramount. WMFTS pumps safely contain any chemical. They can also reverse the flow to completely empty the pipework prior to any maintenance.