RU2396312C2 - Wort preparation apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

FIELD: chemistry.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to brewing and can also be used to produce wort for kvass and in alcohol production. The wort preparation apparatus has a housing fitted with heating/cooling apparatus, inside of which there is a movable container fitted with wort separation and tapping apparatus, in which there is one or more water-permeable sacks with mashed material. The movable container can be a perforated drum which can rotate. The movable container can have on its inner wall apparatus for raising and releasing sacks with mashed material during rotation, or the sack can be tied to the wall of the movable container. The movable container can be connected in series to apparatus for hopping wort and/or separating protein and/or hop residue. In order to carry out the mashing process through decoction mashing, the movable container is connected in parallel to one or more similar apparatus in which the mashed material in the sacks undergoes decoction, after which the separated liquid phase is pumped into the apparatus again for preparation of wort.

EFFECT: invention enables to considerably cut on the price of the cooking procedure, considerably cut the size of the cooking procedure, considerably shorten the duration of the cycle for producing beer wort from 5-8 hours to 3-5 hours, provide output of the cooking procedure to 8-14 brews per day depending on duration of the combined mashing and filtration process, reduce power consumption of the cooking procedure and reduce residual content of wort in the mash.

8 dwg

Description

The invention relates to brewing and can be used in breweries of any capacity, and can also be used for the production of wort for the production of kvass and alcohol production.

One of the main areas of beer production is the brewing wort production area - brewing order. Currently, there is a wide variety of brewing orders, but they implement the general method for the production of brewing wort, consisting of 4 steps:

1. At the first step, a mashing process occurs, in which crushed malt or a mixture of malt with unmalted raw materials is mixed with water and according to the selected mashing technology, the resulting mash is heated / cooled according to the established temperature curves, in which starch is converted into sugars by the action of enzymes present in the malt . The duration of this process is usually 2-3 hours. When using welding-off mashing methods, an additional mash apparatus is added, which allows to take out part of the mash during mashing, boil it and return it to the first mash apparatus. These methods of mashing are widely used for the use of unmalted materials and when using low-quality malt, as well as to increase the yield of the final product from the malt.

2. Subsequently, the mash is transferred to a filter tank (or a may filter), in which the grains are separated from the wort. The duration of this process is also usually 2-3 hours. It should be emphasized here that the filter chan or the Mayfilter are the most expensive units in the cooking order.

3. The resulting wort is transferred to a muster, in which it is boiled with hops, the duration of which is usually 1-1.5 hours

4. At the last stage, the process of separation of protein sediment from hot wort occurs, in which the wort is fed tangentially into the whirlpool. The sediment settles at the bottom of the whirlpool, in its center, and hot hopped wort is discharged from the side. The duration of this process is usually 20-60 minutes. Sometimes, instead of a whirlpool, a decanter is used, while the precipitate of hot wort naturally settles at the bottom in the process of finding the wort in the decanter. The duration of this process is usually 1-2 hours, and the process of wort separation on separators is also sometimes used. However, it was the whirlpool that received the greatest distribution. (Wolfgang Kunze. Technology of malt and beer. - St. Petersburg, "Profession", 2001).

All modern cooking orders that implement this method have three main disadvantages:

1. The high cost of the cooking order. Moreover, as already noted, the most expensive part of the entire cooking order is the filtration unit - a filter chan or a may filter, the cost of which ranges from 40 to 60% of the cost of the entire cooking order.

2. Large dimensions of the cooking order. And again, in the case of the use of a filter chan, it is he who occupies the largest space of the brewing shop, as for the main filter, his disadvantages include the need for a relatively frequent replacement of consumables, such as filter membranes and squeezing membranes.

3. The duration of the beer wort production cycle. As noted earlier, the mashing process takes about 3 hours, the same filtering process, the same process of boiling the wort and separating the protein sediment on average takes 1 hour, and that 8 hours per 1 cycle. It should be emphasized that it is the first two steps - mashing and filtering that take up most of the time for making beer wort - about 6 hours, while the process of boiling wort with hops and separating protein sediment is only 2 hours.

To solve the above drawbacks, many companies produce equipment that allows, following the above method of making wort, to carry out some stages sequentially, but in the same equipment. Thus, two-apparatus systems for the production of brewing wort were developed, in which the mashing and boiling processes of wort occur sequentially in a combined mashing and boiling apparatus, and the filtering apparatus is combined with a whirlpool, providing sequential processes of filtration and separation of protein sediment. These technical solutions are most relevant for mini and microbreweries and medium-capacity brewing systems. At the same time, it was possible to solve the problems of the high cost of the cooking order and large dimensions, the duration of the cycle remained the same. In addition, due to the use of the same equipment in series for different steps of obtaining wort, the productivity of such plants has plummeted. For example, if a classical 4-apparatus installation for the production of brewing wort is capable of producing 8-14 brews per day, depending on the duration of the mashing and filtering stages, then two-apparatus systems produce only 4 brews, that is, productivity dropped 3 times.

The prior art solutions aimed at conducting the mashing and filtering processes in one device. For example, in the RF patent for a method and installation for the production of beer (No. 2119941, 10.10.1998), an installation is described that contains a mash boiler, in the casing of which there is an annular and bottom shirt communicating with the supply of refrigerant, and a vertical rod with cross members connected with reversible feed drive, wort circulation and heating devices, hot water battery, chiller and tank. In the upper part of the boiler, a hatch is mounted under a reversible drive equipped with a variator with a mesh removable container mounted on the rod cross-members. This installation implements a method involving the washing up of a layer of grains in a mesh container by circulating mash through it.

The disadvantage of this device is the complexity of the proposed structural solution due to the addition of additional lifting mechanisms and drives and the need to solve the problem of unloading grains from the container, while the beer production cycle is increased and the losses of wort remaining in the grains increase. This is due to the fact that the diameter of the mesh container in this case cannot be larger than the diameter of the mash apparatus itself, which means that a layer of grains on the mesh surface is too high. Modern filtering apparatuses in the brewing order are significantly larger in diameter than the mash unit of the same brewing order, providing a layer height of grains from 30 to 65 cm (book of Ludwig Narcissus. Brewing, volume 2. Technology for making wort. - M., "Elevar", 2003) . In addition, this technical solution, when it is used in a brewing order instead of mash and filtration apparatuses, will also reduce the overall productivity of the brewing order to 4 brews per day, since the apparatus will be occupied consecutively by mashing and filtering for up to 6 hours or more.

The present invention allows to solve all of the above disadvantages, namely, significantly reduce the high cost of equipment, significantly reduce its dimensions, reduce the duration of the beer wort production cycle and provide from 8 to 14 brews per day, depending on the duration of the mashing process.

This is achieved by the fact that the installation for the preparation of the wort contains a housing equipped with heating / cooling means, inside which a movable container is provided, equipped with means for separating and removing the wort, in which one or more permeable containers-bags with rubbed raw materials are placed.

The movable container may be a perforated drum mounted for rotation.

The movable container may have means on the inner wall for lifting and dumping the bag containers with rubbed raw materials, or the bag may be fixed to the wall of the movable container.

Sequentially, an apparatus for hopping wort and / or separating protein and / or hop precipitate can be connected to it.

To ensure the possibility of carrying out the mashing process by welding methods, one or more of the same plants can be installed in parallel to it, in which the mashing of raw materials located in the bag containers will be boiled, after which the separated liquid phase will be pumped to the wort preparation plant.

Essentially, a solution is proposed for the production of wort with a combined mashing and filtration phase, which provides for the introduction of permeable containers-bags with rubbed raw materials into the installation for making wort. After that, the mashing process begins, for example, by the infusion method (the proposed method does not exclude the possibility of various mashing methods). Containers - bags introduced into the installation can be either disposable as tea bags, or reusable, and their weight can vary from 5 g to 100 kg, depending on the performance of the installation. The quantity and weight of these bags is selected based on considerations of ensuring the best yield of the wort from the mass of rubbed raw materials, depending on the design features, for example, the ratio of the dimensions of the container, the presence of elements that affect the mixing process. Due to the fact that the rubbed raw material is in permeable bags, the particles of the grains do not directly go into the wort, as a result of which the mashing and filtering processes are combined. Therefore, after the end of the process of mashing and removing bags with spent grains, the resulting wort is subjected to a hopping process, bypassing the filtration phase, and subsequently, the process of separating the protein precipitate.

Actually, the use of bags for placing malt in them to produce wort has been popularly known since ancient times, when ground malt was poured into a linen bag, and hops were added there. A samovar was placed on the edge of the table so that its tap was above the floor. Under the tap on the floor they put a large pot in which honey was placed. Boiling water from the tap should pour continuously. Boiling water is poured into a bag with malt medium stream, and the thick malt is often mixed. When about 10 liters of solution are poured into the pan, the tap is closed, the liquids are allowed to cool, then the yeast is poured and fermented (see. Http: //beersite.narod/ru/pivoz/html). However, as can be seen, this solution is not applicable on an industrial scale and the modern development of technology in view of its primitiveness. The formation of stagnant zones of extracted malt and hops is not excluded. And also this method is not able to provide the temperature profiles selected by the brewer for the mashing process and compliance with the formulations already developed.

The technical result of the claimed invention is that the time required to obtain the wort is significantly reduced by combining the mashing and filtering processes, that is, there is no need to mash the wort after filtering to filter it even if it is carried out in one apparatus; the filtration efficiency is increased due to the elimination of particles of rubbed raw materials from getting into the resulting wort, the extraction efficiency is ensured due to the active mixing of the raw materials in the mobile container, the formation of stagnant zones is eliminated, that is, the entire mass of rubbed raw materials is uniformly extracted. Thus, the cost of the final product is reduced due to the fact that the duration of the wort production process according to the proposed method is significantly reduced, and the cooking speed corresponds to the maximum productivity of the classic 4-device cooking order - 8-14 brews per day against 4 when using the patent specified above. The quality of the wort is improved. This is due to the fact that the mash is not pumped, air absorption is minimal, which is a positive factor, since oxygen during mashing leads to the oxidation of polyphenols, and with it to erosion of the taste and higher color of the finished beer.

As noted above, the invention can significantly reduce the high cost of equipment, significantly reduce its dimensions, reduce the duration of the beer wort production cycle to 3-5 hours instead of the traditional 5-8 hours due to the combination of mashing and filtering processes and provide from 8 to 14 brews per day, depending on the duration of the mashing process

The installation implements a method with a combined phase of mashing and filtering, it includes an installation for producing wort, a hopping unit for wort and a unit for separating protein sediment. Moreover, the hopping unit and the protein precipitate separation unit can be either stand-alone equipment or a combined apparatus for hopping the wort and separating the protein precipitate. The plant for receiving the wort includes a case equipped with a heating / cooling system for the wort, inside which a movable container is placed, equipped with a system for removing the wort, into which containers-bags with rubbed raw materials are placed, or the bag is fixed on the inner or outer wall of the moving container.

The essence of the claimed solution is illustrated by the description of the installation.

Figure 1 presents the technological scheme of the installation for producing wort, and figure 2 and figure 3 shows the installation for receiving wort, figure 4 and figure 5 shows a possible design of a movable perforated drum. In Fig.6 and Fig.7 depicts a plant for producing wort with an apparatus for hopping wort and separating protein and / or hop sediment, Fig.8 is its technological scheme.

The plant for receiving the wort of FIG. 1, FIG. 2, FIG. 3 comprises a housing 1 mounted on vibro-supports, a movable container 2 located inside the housing and representing a perforated drum with ribs 4 for lifting and dumping containers - bags 13 with rubbed raw materials with stirring or with a bag 14 mounted on the inner or outer wall of the movable tank, drum drive 3, pump 5, wort heating system 6, which can be either electric or steam or gas, water supply pipe 7, washing head SIP 8, dirt trap -filter 9 for delaying pieces of grains that nevertheless passed through the bag into the wort, a drain valve 10, a valve for distributing the flow to the circulation of the wort or the delivery of the finished un hopped wort 11 and the bottom valve 12.

The installation of FIG. 6, FIG. 7, FIG. 8 comprises a plant for producing wort 22, consisting of the elements described above and in FIG. 1, FIG. 2, FIG. 3, as well as an apparatus for hopping wort and protein separation and / or hop precipitate 23, comprising a housing 24, a water supply pipe 25, a self-cleaning insulated shower head 15, a tangential inlet for virpulation 16, a drain valve 17, a pump 18, a bottom valve 19, a wort heating / cooling system 20, which can be either electric, and steam or gas, and a side valve for draining the finished wort 21.

Installation works as follows.

Sacks with rubbed raw materials are introduced into the perforated drum 2 through the hatch in the housing 1 of the plant for preparing wort 22, or the bag is fixed on the outer or inner wall of the movable container and then the rubbed raw material is introduced inside. The hatch closes hermetically, the amount of water is turned on in accordance with the selected mashing technology. The drum drive is turned on at low speeds, which ensures, with the help of ribs 4, the lifting of the bags, or of the rubbed raw material in the case of one fixed bag, during rotation of the drum and their falling onto the surface of the collected water from the point where gravitational forces overcome the friction and centrifugal forces acting on the pouch. The mashing process itself begins directly according to the selected technology. In this case, the required temperature regime is achieved by means of the wort heating / cooling system 6. Mashing is carried out with constant or periodic rotation of the drum at low revolutions, which allows the bags to be lifted using ribs 4, or the raw material to be rubbed in the case of one fixed bag during rotation of the drum and their fall on the surface of the collected water. With the help of pump 5, a constant or periodic circulation of the liquid medium through the dirt trap is organized - a filter 9, which traps particles of grains that nevertheless passed through the bag into the liquid fraction, and a flow distribution valve 11. The duration of the mashing process corresponds to the selected mashing technology. After the end of the mashing process, which, depending on the selected technology, lasts from 2 to 3 hours, the obtained liquid fraction - un-hopped wort is pumped out by pump 5 into the apparatus for hopping the wort and separating the protein and / or hop precipitate 23. After that, the drum rotates at maximum speed providing the extraction of residues of the liquid fraction from the bags with rubbed raw materials. After that, the water supply is turned on, the drum rotates at low speeds and the bags are rinsed for more complete use of the rubbed raw materials. The resulting wash water is also pumped to the apparatus for hopping the wort and separating the protein and / or hop sludge 23. The drum rotates again to maximum speed and the bags are finally pressed, the resulting liquid phase is again pumped to the hopping machine for wort and separating the protein and / or hop precipitate 23, and squeezed bags, or one bag in the case of one fixed bag, are removed from the drum through the hatch on the housing 1 of the installation to obtain wort 22. At this combined phase mashing and filtering of this cycle ends and a new batch of bags with overwritten raw materials is loaded into the plant for receiving wort for the next mashing cycle. Unhopped wort, pumped into the wort hopping apparatus and separating the protein and / or hop precipitate 23, is hopped according to the selected technology and formulation. The wort is heated by the wort heating / cooling system 20, and the circulation is due to the pump 18 through the bottom valve 19. The duration of this process is usually about 1 hour, after the end of the hopping process, the virpulation process starts in the same apparatus - separation of protein and / or hop precipitate, for which the bottom valve 19 closes and opens the side valve 21 and begins the circulation of hot hopped wort using the pump 18 through the tangential inlet 16, providing the necessary rotation of the wort in the case of the device for hopping the wort and separating the protein and / or hop precipitate 23, the result of which is the deposition of the protein and hop precipitate at the bottom of the housing 24. The duration of this process is usually up to 40 minutes, after which the circulation stops and the finished beer wort is discharged through the side valve 21 . The resulting precipitate is washed out through the bottom valve 19 after the removal of the finished wort. After that, the device for hopping the wort and separating the protein and / or hop precipitate 23 is ready and is waiting for the receipt of a new batch of un hopped wort from the plant for the preparation of wort 22, in which the combined mashing and filtering phase is already coming to an end.

When developing an experimental batch of beer using the method of producing wort with the combined phase of mashing and filtering, high quality was noted, marked by the highest tasting score.

To ensure the possibility of carrying out the mashing process by welding methods, in parallel with the installation for making wort, one or more of the same plants are installed, in which the mashing of raw materials in containers-bags will be boiled off, after which the separated liquid phase will be pumped to the installation wort.

The proposed solution allows you to:

1. significantly reduce the high cost of the brewing order, since the most expensive equipment is a mash filtration unit;

2. significantly reduce the size of the cooking order, again, due to the absence of a mash filtration unit;

3. significantly reduce the duration of the cycle of obtaining beer wort from 5-8 hours to 3-5 hours due to the combination of the mashing process and filtering;

4. to ensure the productivity of the cooking order from 8 to 14 brews per day, depending on the duration of the combined process of mashing and filtering;

5. reduce the cooking power consumption again, due to the lack of a separate mash filtration unit;

6. reduce the residual wort content in the pellet due to the extraction of the container bags due to centrifugal forces.

Claims (5)

1. Installation for making wort contains a housing equipped with heating / cooling means, inside of which is a movable container equipped with means for separating and draining the wort, in which one or more permeable containers-bags with rubbed raw materials are placed. 2. Installation according to claim 1, characterized in that the movable container is a perforated drum mounted for rotation. 3. Installation according to claim 1, characterized in that the movable container has means on the inner wall for lifting and dumping the bag containers with rubbed raw materials during rotation. 4. Installation according to claim 1, characterized in that the apparatus for hopping the wort and / or separating the protein and / or hop precipitate is connected in series to it. 5. Installation according to claim 1, characterized in that, in order to enable the process of mashing by welding methods, parallel to it, one or more of the same plants for boiling the rubbed raw materials in bag containers, and subsequent separation and pumping of the liquid phase are additionally placed in the installation for the preparation of wort.

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