Krones takes craft brewer out of the garage and into the future

Avery Brewing in Boulder, Colorado, is ranked among the pioneers of the American craft beer scene. Started in 1993, when Adam Avery and his father Larry began to brew beer in a garage using a small eight-hectolitre brewhouse, by 1996 annual output had already reached about 1400 hectolitres.

After repeated expansions — culminating in a row of 10 adjacent garages hosing brewing equipment — the business was ready for a serious upgrade. A brand new facility was planned featuring a capacity of around 100,000 hectolitres and capable of brewing the firm’s range of 52 different types of beer each year — one for every week!

Avery chose a CombiCube B from Krones as the core technology. This compact-size brewhouse consists of four vessels: a mash tun, a lauter tun, a wort kettle and a whirlpool. It has been dimensioned for an output of 100 hectolitres/brew with eight brews/day, which is double the capacity of the old system.

Highly flexible working

For malt grinding, an upstream Variomill wet mill with a throughput of 10 tons/h was installed by Avery. Such a high throughput could also feed malt grist to a second CombiCube B, something that Avery intends to install once the first has reached the limits of its capacity.

“With this approach, we can quite easily double our brewhouse volume while still retaining the flexibility we need for our many different beers,” director of operations Steve Breezley explained.

The brewhouse is already being run round the clock. This is due, in particular, to the wide diversity of beer types: some of them are produced with a brew quantity of only 35 hectolitres, while others need the CombiCube’s full output of more than 100 hectolitres.

A few of the barrique beers in the brewhouse reach an extremely high original gravity of 32° Plato; these beers are then fermented to an ABV of up to 18%. “The CombiCube has turned out to be the ideal tool for us,” said Adam.

A hop-dosing system has also been integrated in the brewhouse, which lends the beers their striking hop aroma and bitterness. In addition, Avery also works with dry hopping in the storage cellar. When the second CombiCube is installed, a vapour condenser as energy recovery system is planned as well, with another one of these to be retrofitted to the first CombiCube B.

A hop-dosing system lends the beers their striking hop aroma and bitterness.

Filling capacity upsized

Avery also decided to incorporate a Krones can filler in its operations. Compared with the old can filler, rated at 2000 cans/h, the new Volumetic VOC can filler — with a Checkmat fill-level inspector connected — is rated at 18,000 cans/h, offering nine times the output of its predecessor, and therefore enough scope for the future.

In the old brewery Avery had only been filling four beers in cans. After the Krones can filler had been commissioned, it was possible for the business to expand its range of canned beer by another four brands, with capacity for further expansion.

The Volumetic VOC can filler offers scope for future growth.

Coming of age

The plan is to upsize the brewery step by step by installing further fermentation and storage tank capacities, so as to reach an annual output of 155,000 hectolitres.