Hammer Mill: Efficiency and Quality from the Start

At BCB, we believe that the required quality and flexibility of our contract brewery can only be achieved with the help of a Meura2001 thin-bed filter.

This technology utilizes a process where the mash is filtered over a filter bed that is only a few centimeters thick.
To obtain efficient and high-quality filtration over this limited thickness, it’s essential that the grain particle diameter is smaller than what is used in a thicker filter bed (20-30 cm) in a conventional filter vessel.

This is achieved by milling the grain to a particle size of 150-170 µm using a hammer mill, instead of crushing it with a roller mill.
A grain diameter of this size allows us to filter quickly (60-90 minutes), achieve an unmatched filtration yield (up to 103%), and obtain wort of the highest quality (clarity, polyphenol content, etc.).

This creates the best conditions for brewing your custom beer even before the brewing process begins.

The Meura2001: Essential Belgian engineering in a contract brewery.

A Meura2001 wort filter is the modern and superior alternative to a filter vessel.

Unlike the filter vessel, the Meura2001’s technology is based on thin-bed filtration, where the filter bed is arranged vertically in multiple chambers.

The filter bed is only 4 cm thick, which results in faster filtration and greater flexibility in the choice of malts, grains, and adjuncts.

Mixes with higher levels of unmalted grains, gluten-free grains, adjuncts, roasted malts, and malts with higher beta-glucan and arabinoxylan content can be filtered without any issues using the Meura2001. This provides you with the utmost flexibility in selecting the grains for your beer.

Furthermore, the ability to close off certain chambers in the Meura2001 allows us to adjust the malt mix for different brew volumes. This way, we can maintain the same wort quality even when you require a lighter malt mix for a lower-gravity beer. In contrast, with a filter vessel, where the filtration area is fixed, the only variable is the thickness of the filter bed, which has implications for filtration efficiency and, more importantly: wort quality.

The possibility to close off chambers also allows us to produce various batch volumes in the same brew house.
This means we can brew your beer in 12, 25, and 50 hl batches without sacrificing consistency and quality.

Additionally, finer milling allows us to mash thicker, saving 1.5 liters of water per kilogram of grain compared to a conventional system. This not only benefits sustainability but also enables us to brew high-gravity beers in all scenarios.
Consistency is guaranteed, regardless of any malt variations.

Finally, due to the lower water consumption, fewer unwanted substances such as polyphenols are leached out, which further improves the quality of the wort, and your beer.

Stainless steel in-line mixer: flexibility and consistency

To brew your custom beer, we must consider varying volumes.
Often, you may want to start with a small-scale brew and then scale up the brewing process. It is our duty as a contract brewery to deliver a consistent final product.

In addition to the Meura2001, we have installed another modern technology: the stainless steel in-line mixer.

It injects culinary steam directly into the mash and is typically mounted at the bottom of the mash tun. This means that steam comes into direct contact with the mash, as opposed to the conventional method of transferring heat to the mash through a double stainless steel wall in the mash tun.
We have also chosen to mount the agitator in our mash tun eccentrically, close to the steam injection point, to distribute heat as effectively and quickly as possible.

This configuration offers several advantages:

• Reduced maillard and caramelization reactions: Steam comes into contact with the mash at a lower temperature, reducing the temperature difference between steam and the mash. This results in fewer maillard and caramelization reactions, which positively affect the quality of your beer.
• Less enzyme denaturation: Due to the same reason mentioned above, enzymes are exposed to less heat, reducing denaturation, and making the process more efficient and sustainable.
• Improved heat transfer: As steam enters the mash 100%, its heat is fully transferred to the mash. This is as sustainable as it gets.
• Maximum flexibility: By not using a double jacket in our mash tun, which needs to be fully submerged during operation to avoid damaging the vessel, we only need to ensure that the inline mixer is submerged. Since it is mounted at the bottom of the mash tun, unlike the conventional system, there is no minimum or maximum mash volume.

External steam jacketed boil kettle: efficiency and flexibility to the last moment

The boil kettle is another essential part of our brewing process. Our boil kettle, equipped with an external steam jacket, ensures rapid and even heating of the wort, resulting in improved hop utilization and a clearer beer.
Thanks to the external jacket, just like in the mash tun, we do not need to adhere to minimum or maximum volumes in the boil kettle, preserving our flexibility.

Boiling under slight pressure enhances evaporation and isomerization efficiency. More evaporation means better wort quality, and improved isomerization efficiency means the hops are used more effectively.

The evaporated wort during the boiling process is condensed using innovative Pfaduko technology with cold water instead of being lost through a chimney. This way, the steam’s heat is used to produce hot brewing water, reducing the need for natural gas. As a bonus, the neighbourhood is spared from unpleasant odors vented through our chimney.

Our engineering makes us the best choice for your custom beer

With this blog post, we want to convey that when you choose BCB for the production of your beer or a custom brew, you are selecting a partner that prioritizes flexibility, quality, and sustainability, right down to the engineering of our machines.

Feel free to contact us if you have any further questions!