30-50 Brl Breweries

Quality Breweries for Quality Brewers

Quality and consistency are paramount considerations in any craft brewery, and in a UK style manual brewhouse, this means continual attention is required, by highly experienced, and trusted personnel, at all stages of the brew, to ensure quality issues are maintained, both during the current brew, and to ensure consistency from one brew to the next.

A low-cost, or pre-owned 30-barrel brewery will typically be a very manual plant, with a combined wort copper / hop vessel, and will use the skills of a highly experienced brewer, being in 100% attendance throughout the brewing process.  From mashing-in, to end of wort transfer to FV, in this kind of brewhouse, a single brew will take around 9 hours to complete, and double brewing will typically demand 18 hours attendance.
 
In comparison, a continental style brewhouse (very expensive) is usually highly automated.  This style of brewhouse relies on the control system to provide benefits in quality, consistency and productivity.  Once the brew recipe is set and tuned, the brewer does little more than monitor alarms, and becomes more of a technician than a brewer.  The brewer only keeps one eye on the brewing progress, and is freed-up to manage other aspects of the brewery.  The automation significantly reduces the man-hours required to produce each brew, the brew time is shortened, and multiple brewing is possible, typically 8 brews per 24hr day.

A Microdat brewhouse is a half-way house between the two extremes, more expensive than the low-tech or used brewhouse approach, but much more economical than the continental style.  We use much more automation than is standard, but we retain the traditional UK ale style brewhouse vessels, as we strongly believe in the use of whole hops, for best possible bitterness and aroma, and going forwards in beer styles, use of green hops, almost impossible in a continental style brewery without great expense. 

Download the document to read more about the Microdat 30-50 Brl Brewery.