Large scale brewing: What factors don't you worry about?

You've been very lucky

You mean 6 or 8 days, right?

 

Not a professional brewer but from my perspective it's interesting to look at the differences between them and homebrewers. And I'd echo GreenKrusty, there is a lot of dodgy commercial beer out there

They have full time brewers, so can rack/filter/bottle etc whenever they need to/when is best for the beer. Unlike myself who has to do it at weekends. They can test DO, bacteria etc. Their scale means if they accidentally put in a few kgs less/more malt it doesn't matter and they will have more consistency in flavour because of those scales

also, they aren't drinking most of their own beer, so can cask condition/don't really need to worry about the consuming of it beyond selling it to other parties - I have to drink all my beer, it'll go dull/stale if not off.

Also because they brew so often they can keep a house yeast continuously going by top cropping, or at least crop for a fairly reasonable number of generations; it's often easier and probably better in most cases for homebrewers to start from scratch in that regard

 

my 2 cents: blending batches is a big plus.

Most commercial fermenters are sized 2-4x larger than the brewhouse size. So most breweries are brewing 2-4 batches and blending them in the same primary fermenter. Blending allows for a much more consistent product in the long run. It sometimes allows for some temporary ingredient substitutions (if needed), is great for the adjustment of gravity, ibu's, srm, etc.

 

And the commercial breweries will blend beers from multiple fermentors as well. This is one of the techniques that AB employees to achieve consistency of their beers.

Cheers!

 

Must be you guys are talking about large Brewers cause the ones I know rarely mix batches.

And I agree there are many dodgy commercial brews for sale

 

I brew on a 15 barrel Brewhouse and blend everything into 30 or 45 barrel fermenters

 

I wouldn't really call double or triple batching, "blending" though. If you're stopping your sparge based on gravity rather than volume, and brewing them all in pretty quick succession, they're all part of the same fermentation.

I think one of the biggest differences is having a facility completely set up to effectively produce wort. (Pumps, Chemicals, etc.) Sanitation is also a huge deal; i.e.: having a cylindroconical fermentor on which you can perform a proper CIP, will always be cleaner than a glass carboy that you scrubbed as hard as you could.

I think a big part of it is also mindset. A lot of homebrewers just like to brew to have beer in their house. (A great reason.) But if the brewer (you) is lazy, and doesn't put in the work to properly produce consistent wort, you're probably not gonna fire him...

 

Definitely agree with this too. Didn't intend to disagree in my post. Just semantics over the word "blending."

Cheers!

 

Yeah it's basically just "wort blending" vs "beer blending" and I agree that most people mean the latter when using the term "blending" although I think it's an accurate term for either.