Netherlands: On 7 March 2005 the Chairman of Royal Grolsch Brewery, Enschede/The Netherlands, Dr Ab Pasman inaugurated their new pilot brewery, according to Huppmann press release. In the presence of nearly 400 brewers from all over Europe, who attended the VLB Spring Conference held in Enschede, Dr Pasman and Prof Frank Methner of the Technical University of Berlin opened two large swing-top bottles filled with a Bavarian-style wheat beer, the first brew from the new Huppmann pilot brewhouse.

As Pasman mentioned in his address to the VLB delegates, it is very important to keep beer up-to-date and adapt to consumer demands. Statements such as “We want to bring back the excitement to our industry”, or “As brewers we have to innovate or others will stimulate the market” clearly show the commitment of Grolsch to play a leading role in the competitive beer market. For Grolsch brewers brand development is an essential part of their business. Therefore they decided to invest in a purpose-built pilot plant only months after the large 4 Mio. hectolitre brewery was commissioned.

The new plant features all aspects of the large-scale brewery from malt intake to filtration: The Huppmann brewhouse is equipped with a Millstar (3.5 t/h), mash group, Lauterstar, dynamic low-pressure boiling (DLPB) system and whirlpool. The cast-out volume is 20 hl per brew. Huppmann also supplied the yeast propagation and the 6 combination tanks for fermentation, maturation and storage. A specialised blending tank allows the complete range of flavour adjustment in the final beer.

The small stream is an exact scale down of the two large neighbouring lines. This ensures optimum adaptation in terms of technology and flavour development with scale-up. To gain additional flexibility, the small process connects to the large brewhouse at several points. This makes it possible to exchange intermediate products at all stages.

The process control system and data acquisition of the pilot plant will also be based on brewmaxx version 7.0, the same system as used for the industrial scale. This provides the flexibility to easily exchange operators between pilot plant and production plant and to train new staff.

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