How to Lower Bright Tank Temperature

[Heritage]

We are having difficulty bottling as our beer is too warm.

We are using a 20 hl DME cone bottom unitank as a bright tank. It has two glycol cooling jackets. We have a 5 ton Edwards chiller operating at 30 psi with glycol at 27 degrees, which is within the chiller normal range. There are 2 other 20 hl unitanks, used for fermentation only and the 40 l. surge tank on the filler connected to the chiller. We cannot get the bright beer below 38.5 degrees.

We are bottling on a PPM filler that is 8 feet from the bright tank. The hose from the bright to the bottler is insulated as is the surge tank on the filler. The beer in the bottle is 51.5 degrees.

How do I get the beer cooler in the bright and keep it cooler while bottling?

Ron

[jipjanneke]

You might need to provide some more info such as:

- does the unitank have cone cooling, or are the two cooling zone on the straight sides only?
- what is the glycol supply temperature TO THE BBT and the return temperature FROM THE BBT?
- bright beer at 38.5°F doesn't sound too drastic ... but the 51.5°F in the bottle does. How close is the actual filling temperature to 38.5°F (i.e. before it hits the bottle)?

[Heritage]

Both the cone and side wall of the BBT have cooling jackets.

The glycol temperature is 27.5 at the BBT supply and 28.5 - 29.0 at the return side. The glycol lines are insulated and this is the first tank.

We have not measured the temperature at the filler just before the beer is bottled. I will get back to you with that information when we start up again. My guess is that 51 is the temperature in the surge tank.

I suspect that the pump is responsible for most of the temperature increase. This has also been suggested as the likely cause in another reply.

The pump is an impeller pump with a stainless steel head and impeller.

Ron

[dick murton]

Where is the temperature probe ? Water density is at its maximum at approx 4 deg C, so if your temperature probe is near the top of the vessel, it is likely to be colder up there than lower down, and shutting off the chilling earlier.

Conventionally, the temperature probes are between, just above the cone of the vessel and one third of the way up the side wall. If the rate of cooling is slow, then you would benefit from one at the top as well in order to prevent a layer of ice forming at the top of the beer.

The beer really needs to be consistently at no more than 1 deg C to allow for temperature pickup on the filler. One possibility (though I accept possibly very difficult for a small brewery) is to run some pre chilled sterile liquor through the filler and mains to cool everything down from ambient before putting the beer on.

Cheers

[Heritage]

Dick
The temperature probe is on the side wall one third of the way up from the join with the cone, just as you suggest. However as we are by passing the temperature controller, when the beer is below the probe, leaving the glycol running all the time, this should not affect cooling or the final temperature. However glycol is circulating through both jackets, while the beer is only covering the bottom one.

Your suggestion that we may be forming ice on the top of the beer is an interesting possibility given that the glycol is circulating all the time and that the glycol temperature is -2.8 Celsius. How would you check to see if we had an ice build up and what should we do to prevent it?

Would the addition of a 10 metre, 1cm in diameter stainless steel cooling coil, connected to the chiller and located inside the cone of the bright tank help?

We have been running our sanitizing solution, which is about 5 Celsius through the filler, hoses and pump, for about 10 minutes, before we start bottling to lower the temperature following sterilization.

Fred
The pump we are using is Fristam #FPX 702 -100, 1½" x 1½" Tri-Clamp inlet/outlet, with 100mm full impeller, 1½" HP TEFC motor, 3500 RPM. Floats in the surge tank (bowl) turn the pump on when the beer level in the surge tank falls below a preset level. It only runs for 3 or 4 seconds at a time. So it’s hard to understand how this would warm up the beer.

Our bottles are at room temperature, which lately has been 72 F or 22 C this will result in some of the final increase in temperature. Should we be pre chilling our bottles?

Ron

[Michael Murphy]

I'm glad I'm not the only one with bottling problems.

I too have trouble with the temp. So I'm learning alot from this post.
Thanks

[Lager Brewer]

Heritage,

I have a similar setup, and I had some of the same problems at start up. Here's what I did, although I can't be sure that it will work for you.

1. lower the temp of the glycol to hit 25C on the RETURN I would check the calibration of the temp probe before doing this. I trust digital equipment about as far as I can throw it.
2. Do a little math and figure out where the beer is sitting on the jackets. If the jacket isn't completely hitting the beer....well, you know the rest.
3. You will not have enough gycol jacket surface area for complete cooling of finished beer. Depending on how good of a job DME did spec'ing the jackets, there will be almost twice as much surface area of cooling jacket for your BBT when compared to your fermenter. There is no chance for you to get the entire beer down to zero without dropping your glycol temp. Remember that there is very little thermal movement in finished beer.

Just my experience.

[Sir Brewsalot]

The best way to see if you're icing up the beer is to look in the manway after you drain the tank - before you do any cleaning. The gravity of the beer leaving the tank in this case would also be higher since some water has been removed - something easy to check.

I'd rule out the pump too - not enough thermal mass in a pump of that size to make a difference, and the energy it's putting into the beer to move it seems insignificant.

Sounds like the bigger issue may be the warm(er) filler you're putting the beer into, or maybe the bottle temp. If it's the filler, you should see the bottling temp come down by the end of the filling run, after the earlier beer has taken much of the heat away from it. Prechilling bottles can be helpful in summer months if you have the cooler space for an overnight chilling.

Good luck.
S

[Lager Brewer]

Another easy way to tell if the BBT beer is cold enough, or more accurately, if the reading on the fermenter that you are using in place of a BBT is a true indication of the total temperature of the beer, is to drop a sanitary thermometer in-line just after the exit of the tank. If the temperature of the beer rises as you draw off from the tank, you know what the culprit is.

I suspect that this is the problem.....you will find that as you draw off the fermenter over several hours that the only glycol hitting the bright beer will be the cone jacket, and that's not enough to keep the beer at zero. Couple this with the difficulty in truly getting a fermenter to get a beer to zero quickly (do you crash cool the beer using the fermenter?), and you can get problems at the filter.

This is what happened to me.

[Heritage]

Just checked the gravity, its up, from 1.016 to 1.018, which confirms that the beer has frozen. This explains why we were not able to lower the temperature in the bright tank. So I have raised the glycol temperateure to 30 (from 27) which should stop it from freezing the beer. Thank you for suggesting that we check the gravity.

For those who have asked the bottom jacket on the DME tank is within 6 inches of the bottom of the cone. So the tank is well designed.

We have been getting the temperature of the beer in the bright from our CO2 tester. We also have thermo wells in our ss pipe which we are placing at different points in the flow.

Also noted that it took 45 minutes for a 250 ml graduated cyllinder of the beer to increase in temperature to 65 degrees so that we could measure the gravity. Yet the beer increases from 38 to 51 in less than 10 minutes when we operate the filler. So we are tracking the temperature a various points in the flow to identify the source of the heat.

You are correct that the pump is not involved as measuring temperature before and after the pump shows no increase in temperature.

We are now going to measure before and after the surge tank (bowl) and at the fill head and then in the bottle to identify where the temperature increase occurs.


Ron

[Heritage]

Yes we use 2 of our unitanks for fermentors and for crashing the beer. Crashing the beer generally takes 24 -36 hours to reduce two tanks from 66 degrees to 32.

The bright is a unitank and the beer in question has been in it since last Thursday and is likely the same throughout at 10 HL. The beer temperature did not increase while we were drawing beer through the CO2 tester.

[jipjanneke]

Heritage, thanks for your posting of follow-ups. Please continue to report what you find as you investigate the problem through the filler... Thanks.

[Heritage]

We had an interesting afternoon trying to isolate the cause of the 12 degree F temperature increase between the bright tank and the beer in the bottle.

We installed ss pipe with thermowells, before and after the pump, at the check valve going into the filler and at the surge tank or bowl.

We put tap water into a tank and measured the temperature it was 70.6 degrees.

Next we turned on the pump and bottler and noted the temperatures. They were all the same at 70.6 degrees F. So the insulation was working and the water did not pick up any heat while it travelled through 14 feet of hose and ss pipe.

When we measured the temperature of the water in the bottle it was 71.6. This is a much smaller increase than we had expected under ideal conditions.

We then turned on the glycol around the surge tank and waited 15 minutes and started up the filler again. The temperature in the bottle fell to 68.6. (the other temperatures remained constant at 70.6) so the insulated glycol jacket works.

We are left with the question of what causes the beer temperature to rise to 51.8?

We ran the pump for an hour and then tested the water before and after the pump and the temperature was a constant 70.6

So is the test invalid because water lacks CO2, alcohol, sugar i.e. we did not use beer?

We ended the day without understanding what caused to beer temperature to rise to 51.8 degrees. So that all was not lost we cleaned the bottler so that we can bottle beer in the morning.

The temperature of the beer in the bright is falling now that we have increased the glycol temperature to 30 from 26 and the ice is melting in the bright tank We will measure the temperature in the morning again and adjust the glycol temperature so that we reach 32. Running the glycol on by pass (without the control) has its limitations however once the beer is below the thermowell the temperature control does not work, so we have no choice, the glycol flows and the temperature drops.

The two tanks we crashed this morning at 10, had dropped from 68 degrees to 50 at 3 this afternoon and at that rate will be at 32 between 2 and 4 tomorrow morning. So the chiller is performing well.


Thank you for the suggestions and encouragement.

Ron

[jipjanneke]

I think you need to keep going and try to measure the temperature at further locations downstream of the header tank.

Also, do you notice the same rise in tempewrature at the end of the bottling run? This would indicate whether or not the filling equipment cools down eventually due to the beer flowing through it for a period.

I did a quick energy balance and, after making a few normal assumptions, calculated that the bottled beer would rise from 32°F to 36.7°F simply by the heat transfer from the bottle itself. A long way from 51.8°F, but it shows the effect of initially warm bottles.

Keep going - the heat is coming from somewhere, and it sounds like it must be downstream of the header tank. Each reading you take is eliminating possibilities (e.g. the pump), so what you have done is not wasted work!

I really don't think the difference in properties between beer and water are significant. The heat is almost certainly being supplied to the liquid externally.

[dick murton]

I suspect the problem is simply the mass of warm metal that you are having to cool with the beer. As previously stated, if the beer temperature drops throughout the run, than this points to this being a major source of heat pickup

It strikes me that one of the problem you have with your current testing regime is that you are putting ambient temperature fluid through the plant, so you are not measuring temperature pick up due to the warm metal of the filler.

Suggest you try running chilled liquor through the filler, the liquor temperature being similar to the beer temperature, and repeat the trial. Is it possible to recirculate water through the flooded filler system cooling it as it recirculates ?

I realise we have the capability, but we flush our fillers out with chilled liquor at 1 to 2 deg C for several minutes immediately prior to introducing beer in order to cool the filler down. We then introduce beer, and then empty the filler. Even after that, the firrst few rounds of bottles off still tend to be a bit fobby due to increased temperature. At other places I have worked on similar large fillers without in line chillers, the problem of fobbing first offs was even more noticeable.

[Lager Brewer]

Heritage,

Have you:
1. checked the calibration of the temp gauge of the BBT?
2. tried putting a sanitary thermowell just below the butterfly in-line on the way to your surgetank?
3. How long does it take you to empty the tank on a run?

[Sir Brewsalot]

Heritage,
This is a great thread - lots of us learning from your troubles, so I for one thank YOU.

Glad to hear the gravity check identified the icing in the tank for you. I'd also echo Mr. Murton's comments about running ambient temp water through as your test fluid. Not a representative test. You gotta run cold water thru it to get the same temperature graidients you're seeing with the beer.

If you have the tank space, fill one w/ water, crash it, and run it through and make your measurements. That filler bowl/tank has got to have some significant thermal mass, so that's where my money is.

Also, was wondering if you took any bottle temp measurements at the middle of the end of the run? This will give you a good indication of whether a pre-beer cold water equipment chilling run would address your problem.

Keep us posted!
S

[MikeJordan]

Having been through these issues I can feel your pain and I can share with you what I have done.

When working with an older Meyer's filler we couldn't really pinpoint the temp. problem until we installed a SS thermometer into the bowl. It was fairly easy as it was something we did in house. We realized even after pre-chilling the filler with cold water that we could only get the bowl temp down to 48-52F before bringing beer into the filler. We found that if we brought beer into the filler slowly and then pushed it back into the BBT with CO2 bowl pressure and then filled the filler bowl again we achieved cooling the bowl by another 10F. It can be a little tricky if you have a check valve inline and time consuming but for this particular small brewery it worked well. The actual temp of the empty bottles varied widely so we also rigged up a cooling spray to flow down the outside of the bottle after the botte rinser. This helped alot in the summer months and gave us better consistent fills with less product loss. Just some ideas for you. Good luck!

[Heritage]

Today was a disappointment. The beer was still frozen, it was at 38.8 degree F. The combination of glycol and tank insulation was sufficient to keep the beer frozen. By the end of the day the temperature had fallen to 38 degrees in the tank. We bottled any way a waste of time and beer.

Following sanitizing and sterilizing the bottler, we rinsed for 12 minutes with cold sanitizing solution to lower the temperature of the bottler. Unfortunately this solution is a70.6 degrees so it took away the high heat but did not lower the temperature of the filler to a good bottling temperature. We then turned on the glycol jacket on the surge tank and let it run for 30 minutes cooling the ss surge tank.

The surge tank is about 40 litres, and operates two thirds full, the head space is filled with CO2. The system calls for beer when the floats drop by one inch. So the pump presents about 4 litres of beer in 3 or 4 seconds, this happens every 3-4 minutes. For us to empty the tank takes about 6-10 minutes.

Those who suggested that ambient temperature water was a poor indicator of temperature performance were correct.

When we were started bottling, the brewery was at 71.6 degrees, air temperature at the surge tank is 73.4 degrees, BBT was 38, temperature, at the surge tank 39 to 42 degrees . (Lower end or range if the pump had just run). Indication that the beer was cooling the ss piping and hoses and the brewery air. So we were picking up 1-3 degrees of heat in 14 feet..

We added more insulation to the pipes and hoses The effect was minor, i.e. the temperature was 39 to 41.5 . So the temperature pick up at the filler from the butterfly valve to the bottle is 3.5 to 4 degrees.

Sir Brewsalot , yes we took bottle temperature throughout the day. Beer in the bottle was 46 degrees and remained constant throughout the day. This suggests that the beer is in the surge tank long enough for the temperature to blend.
BBT temperature fell from 38.8 to 38 during the day with no measurable impact on the temperature in the bottle.

So all the insulation saved us 6 degrees. (As you will recall we previously went from 38 to 51.8 and now it was 38 to 46.) We need to fill faster so that the beer has less time to warm. We will try additional insulation and are looking for a way to measure temperature in hoses.

We are going to swap out our heated CO2 regulator, which controls the CO2 going to the surge tank and see if this is causing the heating problem. This CO2 is also used for sift which can cause excessive foaming every 6 or 7 filling cycles (2 head filler)
We will also remove the 20 litre tank that is holding CO2 between the CO2 tank and the surge tank. This would warm the CO2 slightly. This was added at the manufacturers suggestion so that we could supply the volume of CO2 required by the surge tank while a bottle was filled.

Temperature gauge calibration – likely OK
We are using 2 digital thermometers that measure in 0.1 of a degree F and a analog mercury thermometer. There is little difference between the digital ones O.1 at the most. The digital temperatures match the mercury thermometer. So we have ruled out calibration. We use the digital thermometers at each stage in the process.

Mike I like the suggestion about bring beer in the surge tank and returning it to the BBT as a way of cooling the surge tank. We will try it when we bottle again on Saturday.

We will check tank temperature and carbbonation in the morning .

Thanks again for your help

Ron

[Lager Brewer]

I guess that I should have been more clear when I said that I had a similar situation. I had the same exact chiller unit, as well as a DME custom built tank. DME screwed up the brew calcs leaving 25 HL of beer needing cooling, with only the cone coming in complete contact with the beer. The top jacket was hit on one out of a possible 14 inches on a single batch.

I brew old school lagers, so the bulk of my cooling load comes from the CLT, pitching at as low as 7C. I am fortunate enough to have a true BBT so, I really didn't have too many problems with packaging until I tried to package a single batch out of a fermenter (we make unfiltered lagers).

I couldn't get the beer down to 0, and I couldn't figure out why (this is when I discovered the jacket placement problem). After going through the same rigamorole that you have (lowering the glycol, and coming in full bore) I found that the temp of the first few packages were cold, but after a short amount of time the beer temp shot up.

I thought that I had inadvertently frozen the beer too, so I moved the beer from one tank to another to find out the hard way, but not after putting a sightglass and a triclamp thermometer inline. To my surprised at the time, the beer temp inline rose (several degrees higher than the BBT thermo was telling me) as the transfer proceeded, and I hadn't turned the pump on yet. I checked the tank after it was drained, and no ice.

Came to find out that the bottom jacket was doing all of the work, and the surface area math wasn't in favor of getting the beer to zero. Asking a shrimpy cone jacket to bring a whole batch down is pointless.

My solution was to alter my brew length in the brewhouse for single batches, and that took care of the problem. Obviously this doesn't solve your current problem, but maybe it will help for the future if you can't solve the downstream issues.

Just trying to help.

[Heritage]

Thank you for clarifying your comments.

Today when we filtered the beer was at 33.6 degrees as it entered to the BBT (unitank) and there was 1650 litres in the tank. So the beer covers the both cone and side wall glycol jackets and the thermo well which via a control manages glycol flow. We are leaving the beer to cool over night before packaging.

Normally, we would have kegged out 500 litres leaving the rest for bottling, thinking that we were leaving less for the chiller to cool and that this would happen more quickly. However kegging uncoved both the thermo well and the side wall jacket. For the chiller to cool we had to by pass the controller and run the glycol wide open at a very low temperature (26 degrees was our final attempt). By-passing the controller created the too warm beer situation, as the beer was unevenly cooled with very cold beer at the bottom of the cone and too warm beer at the surface.

Hopefully this will resolve the tank temperature problem.

We are still searching for the cause of the increase in temperature between the tank and the bottle.
We are now wondering if it made worse by the increased insulation, trapping the heat of sterilization and releasing it slowly as we bottle. One of the observation we made was that the temperature at the butterfly valve for the surge tank fell from 42 to 39 when the pump was running and then it rose to 42 again. The heat is coming from some where.

On a trial basis tomorrow we are going to sterilized an insulated hose (180 degree water for 40 minutes), then run cold sanitizer for 12 minutes as is our practice. Then we will fill the hose with beer and check the temperature. We will do the same with an uninsulated hose and track the temperature changes.

This will tell us if we need to go to ss pipe wrapped in copper pipe and run glycol through the copper pipe to remove the heat.

I will keep you posted.

Thank you again for your help and interest.


Ron

[hoppyguy]

There is alot of talk about temperature being the issue here. Granted, temperature does have a big effect in bottling beer, but it is not the only. I found it interesting there is a secondary CO2 holding tank on the system, and there is an issue every 6-7 cycles. One of the biggest problems I have encountered bottling beer is CO2 issues. Most CO2 suppliers that smaller brewers use are used to suplling restaurants and have very little experience servicing a production facility. The whole counter pressure thing can be very touchy and also very dependent on your particular filler. I would look at making sure the bottles are getting completely pressurized and then ensuring the gas is released in a controlled manner. Although they are not optimal conditions, you should be able to bottle beer at the temperatures you are noticing. Make sure you are truly getting the volume of CO2 you need to run the machine. You may also want to talk to the manufacturer about adjusting the settings.

[Heritage]

Hoppyguy
You are right that CO2 pressure is critical to successful bottle filling; it is particularly true with the PPM Evolution filler. It has been a challenge to get the pressures right and to deliver the volume of CO2 required.
For filling to work we must maintain 30-psi pressure in the surge tank and 38 pounds for the push back.

We have one CO2 cylinder dedicated to push back and another (with a heated regulator) connected to the surge tank.

Until we purchased a Concoa heated regulator we were freezing the CO2 tank and could not get an adequate supply of CO2 for pre-evacuation and pushback.

With beer at less than 36 degrees we can bottle as long as we maintain the pressures and flow of CO2 required by the system. When ever the pressure in the bowl (surge tank) drops below 30 of the flow of CO2 is inadequate from the pushback CO2 cylinder then we has an improperly filled bottles and sometimes just bottles of foam.

When the temperature is over 36 we can bottle by slowing down the process and lowering the pressures to, 18 and 26 pounds, unfortunately this turns then machine into a 2 bottles per minute machine ( 4 cases an hour). which is just not good enough. The failure to fill is the direct result of inadequate pressure in the bottle before filling.

Sirbrewsalot and MikeJordan

Tests show that there is a lot of heat left in the hose and pipes, which is consistent with your observations. So we will be sterilizing a glycol heat exchanger when we sterilize the bottler, then when sanitizing the filler we will turn the glycol on, chill the sanitizing solution and let the sanitizing solution flow through the filler until we reach 32-24 degrees. This will be longer than the 12 minutes with tap 70 degree sanitizer we have been doing. We will measure the temperature of the discharge water and continue until we reach 32-34 degrees..

Our beer is at 32.4 this morning (gycol 32 at the chiller supply side) so that's good. We expect to get the filler to a similiar temperature tomorrow morning before we bottle.

Thank you

Ron

[Sir Brewsalot]

This may be a little off topic, and pardon my ignorance since most of my bottling experience is not with beer, but have you considered priming and bottle conditioning? Seems like it might be a whole lot simpler, but might not be right for your beer, and your setup.

Just wondering.

Otherwise, it sounds like you're getting close to isolating the issue.

S

[Heritage]

SirBrewsaLot
Yes we have considered developing a bottle conditioned product and have experimeneted with it.

You are right taht bottle conditioned products would behave differently in the filler. The lower carbonation levels make it some what easier to bottle.

We have already lowered our carbonation level from 2.72 to 2.54 to help with our current situation.

Ron

[hmois]

When i was brewing in Co. we had this warm beer problem all the time,i got so mad after a while so i hooked up my heatexchanger (after claening and sanatizing) between tank and filler ,filled it with water first so all oxygen was out ,kept the whole thing under tank and filler pressure and run icewater stored and chilled in a emty tank in circulation (prepared ahead for the bottling day).i startedwith 10 bbl icewater 33.5 degrees and after i botteled 20 bbl (that was all we did at one day) the watertemperature was up on 34til 36 degrees.the beer temp was around 37-39.
and bottling was great from then the average beertemp.in the bottle was 33.5
to this time i was also considering to hook up my glycol chiller to the heatexchanger so bad was bottling on this old worn out s....
on top of warm beer
hope it helps-prost
Harry

[Heritage]

We tried to apply this weeks learning when we bottled on Saturday.

The change in the glycol setting on the chiller supply to 32 resulted in 35 degree beer. Better that 38-39 but still not 32 -34.

After sterilizing the filler we measured temperature of the filler and sanitizer coming out of the filler - filler temperature after sterilization 147 degrees at the buttery fly valve and exit sanitizer of 152.

Normally we would have stopped running the sanitizer after 12 minutes. This time used our glycol chilled heat exchanger to cool the sanitizer and ran it through the filler. We were able to lower the temperature to 39 degrees at the butterfly valve with 41 degree exit solution after 45 minutes. The temperature then held steady for the next 7 minutes.

So started filling and beer in bottle at 41 - 42 degrees. We had limited success 4 cases an hour. 10% of rated thruput.

Need to understand why the temperature stopped falling and why the temperature increased from 35 to 39 between the tank and the filler.

Believe that we were unable to cool the pump sufficiently with the cooled sanitizing solution.

The answer may be to sterilize the night before, fill with a sanitizing solution and then cool in the morning. We could also just acid wash the pump.

What sanitizing solution would be best to leave in the filler overnight?