When a microbrewery creates a new beer...

Hmm, interesting question. Guess that depends on the microbrewery, the size of system they have, the size of fermenter they put it into, and whether they have a pilot system to test small batches. Some breweries might use a 10 gallon system (essentially a homebrew system) and test it out. If they feel good about the recipe, they might go for a full batch without brewing a pilot batch.

What a full batch is depends on the size of the brewhouse. Microbreweries tend to have brewhouses in the 1 BBL to 30 BBL range, with most falling between 7 BBL - 15 BBL. The fermenter size might take multiple batches to fill, but I would guess most breweries would try the smallest batch size possible to test out their recipe.

Hope this helps.

 

Depends on their system, obviously. A lot of breweries have a pilot system to try new recipes. Most pilot systems are basically glorified homebrewing set ups. They can often turn out half barrel or single barrel batches. A lot of micros also brew much smaller batches than their tanks will handle. They actually have tanks that will accommodate double or triple what they can produce in a brewing session, and fill them in a marathon brewing day. So if they try something new, they can often brew a batch smaller by two or three times than their normal brew size.

 

We have a small local microbrewery which has just installed a 3 bbl plant.It's used to try experimental brews, to brew individual batches ( for example when a beer festival asks for a dedicated brew or for a beer club to brew their own) and also to keep brewing beers for which there is a tiny but steady demand which doesn't justify a full brew.

 

Holy City Brewing has their three keg shell system in their brewery. I think they run test batches on that and then scale up. More resources mean a different set up depending on the brewery and their capacity.

 

Many have a the homebrewer set ups made from Kegs, 10 gallon batches. Some like RR and Stone have the 20 gallon homebrew system from morebeer.com.

Toured Odells this summer and they have a 4 barrels system.

Larger breweries can have even bigger. SN has a 5 vessel 10 barrel pilot brewhouse that can make 20 (or 30) barrels on a shift. Bells uses their old system at the downtown brewery for experimental batches, and that is 15 barrels IIRC. You have to remember that these breweries have much bigger production brewhouses than most (SN = 100 and 200 bbl systems, Bells = 50 and 200 bbl systems)

Any brewery will have a good idea how the batches scale up as the efficiency and hop utilization will change on the bigger systems.

 

Are tickers ISO?

 

New Glarus has a pretty neat 30 liter Pilot Brewery.



I know the guys at Geneva Lakes Brewing (a new start-up here in SE WI) have a SABCO BrewMagic system in addition to their production brewery.

 

Bell's had a 10 barrel system I believe it was for a long time downtown, that gave up the ghost a few years back. You are correct, they use a 15 barrel set up downtown currently.

 

They even had a 2 barrel at one time, not anymore. I think the original soup kettle will always be around, though retired from production.

 

Saw the 15 gallon soup kettle at the History of Beer display at the Grand Rapids Public Museum today, it was on loan. The little tag by it said it was the "Holy Grail" of Michigan Beer. Made me smile.

Edit - The Founder's bolt cutter was in the same display case.

 

what does 1 bbl equate to in terms of, say 12 oz bottles?

 

A barrel of beer is 31 gallons. There are 128 oz in a gallon, so that is 3968 oz/bbl.

Divide that by 12 and you get 330.67 12 Oz bottles.

Math is fun. At least for me.

 

Thanks

 

There is the answer above on how many bottles in a barrel.

Most breweries will not bottle the pilot batches. I have been told by industry people at large production breweries that it takes 10 or more barrels just to charge the bottling line, so they don't bother with bottles for pilot brews. Those go into half barrels (or smaller) for the taproom and most favored accounts.