In the brewing industry, efficiency and space management are crucial to maintaining smooth operations and maximizing productivity. One often overlooked yet incredibly versatile tool that can help achieve these goals is the utility cart. By customizing utility carts, you can transform them into specialized equipment that caters to various brewing needs, ultimately enhancing your brewery’s efficiency and saving valuable space! With a few modifications using appropriate fittings, these sturdy carts can be converted into specialized equipment that addresses specific brewing processes. Here are some innovative ways to customize utility carts for your brewery:
1. Brewhouse Manifold or Kegging Cart
Transforming a utility cart into a process flow manifold or kegging cart is the simplest and most common usage of this flexible framework. By simply adding a tri-clamp manifold and a few valves, you can control multiple liquid streams, fill multiple kegs simultaneously, or easily perform in-line additions of secondary ingredients. The cart can be equipped with:
• Multiple sankey couplers for fast and efficient kegging
• Reducers, manifolds, splitters, and valves to control fluid flow paths, strainers, and plates for in-line filtration
2. Pump Cart or CIP Cart
Cleaning and sanitizing your brewing equipment is a critical task that can be made more efficient with one of our mobile carts. Customizing a utility cart with a pump, hard piping, and appropriate fittings simplifies the cleaning process, allowing you to move the cart to different areas of the brewery as needed, thereby optimizing workflow and reducing downtime. Features can include:
• A mounted centrifugal pump for circulating cleaning and sanitizing solutions.
• Select from our wide range of VFDs for fully customizable pump control
• Custom jacketed or single-wall tank designs available for chemical recirculation and holding.
3. Process Filtering/ Infusion Cart
Filtering your product efficiently is key to producing a high-quality beer with a consistent flavor and appearance. A process filtering cart has three in-line canister filters, which can be outfitted with a range of screen meshes, depending on your sediment load—whether it’s for yeast, hops, or other particulates. As an added bonus, the filter screens can be removed from the canisters, allowing you to fill them with flavor and aroma infusions. Combine this manifold with a pump, and recirculate until your desired extraction level through vanilla bean, coffee, hops, and more for unique one-off products, or for flavoring a whole batch!
These carts can feature:
• Variable size strainers and screen filters for effective and customizable particulate filtration.
• Sanitary tri-clamp connections for easy integration with your existing process flow.
• The ability to be wheeled from tank to tank, offering flexibility and space-saving in your brewery’s filtration process.
4. In-Line Heater Cart
Heating solutions for small-scale processes are often space and energy inefficient. An in-line heater cart allows you to apply controlled, localized heat wherever it is needed in your brewing process. By customizing a cart with an in-line electric you can:
• Heat liquids during the transfer between tanks without needing a fixed heating system.
• Maintain optimal temperatures for processes like mash recirculation or oil extraction.
• Move the heater to different stations as required, reducing the need for multiple static heating solutions and saving space.
• Add to CIP cart
5. In-Line Pasteurization Cart
For breweries that need to pasteurize their beer, converting a utility cart into an in-line pasteurization unit can be a game-changer. Utilizing an inline electric heater, and with design options for direct or indirect heating, your product is circulated through the unit, picking up heat as it does so. With temperature control on your product tank turned off, you can effectively utilize this simple ‘reverse heat exchange’ principle to raise the temperature of your product to your target pasteurization temperature. Upon reaching your desired PU (pasteurization units), simply turn off recirculation, turn tank temperature control back on, carbonate to your desired volumes of CO2, and you’re ready to package shelf-stable product.
6. Dry Hop Doser Cart
While dry hopping might just be the most argued-over process in the industry, the resulting product has one consistent element we can all agree upon: an overwhelming fan base. Getting these dank, fruity, resinous aromas into your beer consists of innumerable variables, so let us help take a couple out of the equation for you. A dry hop doser setup allows you to add your precious oily pellets (or liquid concentrates) in a safe and oxygen-free manner. Choose from a variety of vessel sizes and connection types to suit your needs. Just add a pump and VFD and you’ve got a hands-off hop infusion system that saves you time, and keeps you from having to climb that ladder with yet another bucket of ballistic geyser-inducing pellets.
Mobile, task-specific carts bring the necessary tools and components directly to where they are needed, minimizing downtime and movement around the brewery. This proximity increases the speed and ease of performing various tasks, from kegging and cleaning to pasteurizing, filtering, heating, and dry hopping. They are relatively inexpensive and can be modified incrementally, allowing your brewery to upgrade your processes without significant capital investment. By customizing carts as needed, you can gradually enhance your operations in a cost-effective manner.
Embrace the versatility of utility carts and unlock the full potential of your brewery! If you need assistance in planning and customizing carts to fulfill particular processes within your brewery, the Glacier Tanks’ Engineering & Sales Team are available to help.
About Glacier Tanks:
Glacier Tanks will help you reach your commercial brewing targets. We are a dedicated and passionate team committed to providing guidance and advice regarding all aspects of the brewing process. Glacier Tanks supply products suitable for your requirements, applications, brewing configuration, and industry.
This article was published on 11/4/2024