CENTRIFUGE CENTRAL: INTRODUCING THE NEWEST PIECE OF KIT IN THE FACTORY
READ ON AS THE BREW TEAM ANSWER THE QUESTIONS ON OUR MIND
(5 MIN READ)
TLDR; WHAT IS A CENTRIFUGE?
Keeping our style flowing, all keg and can beer is spun in the centrifuge removing all yeast and sediment. Yeast is an incredibly dominating flavour in beer, spin it out and the hops are left to lead the aroma and taste charge.
In short, our beer has to be vegan and we don't want yeast in suspension. By spinning the brew we can give you the clarity you love without the use of finings.
What's more, by using the centrifuge we get a greater yield on each brew. It removes the sediment without needing to discard viable beer in the process, and takes just a fraction of the usual time to do so.
If we’re making more beer with the same amount of ingredients, we can keep our beer at the same accessible prices, when everyone is feeling the squeeze.
I’M FOLLOWING. BREAK IT DOWN.
Naturally, sediment drops from beer in a couple of days, and once the sediment has gathered in the bottom of the vessel, you would chuck around 300L from each brew down the drain to dispose of it.
With the centrifuge we’re getting up to 95-97% yield on non-dry hopped beer, such as Milk Stout. Which means only 3% goes down the drain, and there’s an extra 15 kegs per brew to go to the pubs!
The way the centrifuge works is that it spins the beer at the weight of 10,000 Gs, dropping the sediment almost instantly. It does take a little longer to transfer the beer – an hour and a bit rather than 45mins – but you’re saving days in the overall process.
DOESN’T EVERY BREWERY USE ONE?
Nope! It’s been on our Head Brewer's wish list for a long, long time.
It’s a real investment piece. You wouldn’t get one if you were starting up a craft brewery, mostly because of the price. It needs a constant supply of cold water as lubrication, so in the wake rising inflation, it costs a lot to keep it running too.
We’ve reinvested a huge chunk of profits back into making our brewery as effective as possible; if you’ve supported us by drinking BBF, it’s thanks to you we can keeping growing and improving our kit.
WILL BBF BEER TASTE THE SAME?
The brewing process hasn’t changed, and neither has the beer. After the normal process ending in fermentation, the beer goes to the centrifuge and then to conditioning, where it spends 24 hours before getting packaged before going to the final – and most important stage of brewing – drinking!
You won’t notice a change in the finished pint. In fact, we’ve been using it for a few months already! Now more than ever, you can rely on a BBF beer to have clarity.
Conversely, you’ll still find beers such as Clear Head have a slight haze, which is due to the starch present in the beer. It doesn’t necessarily have an impact on the BBE date either; pasteurisation and filtering would do that, which we don’t do. You should keep BBF cans cold always, and drink fresh from the brewery when possible.
SHOW US THIS IMPRESSIVE PIECE OF KIT, THEN.
It’s pretty large, nothing special to look at (the magic happens within) and it’s noisy when it gets going. But it’s not as big as other brewery kit, like fermentation tanks.
Come along to one of our public tours with the brewers, every Tuesday, and see it for yourself!
