Brite beer tank

Bright beer

Contents

Dropping bright [ edit ]

When the concentration of fermentable sugars in the beer falls below a certain level, variable with the strain of yeast, the yeast cells will naturally flocculate and settle toward the bottom of the vessel in which the beer is stored; this act is known as dropping bright . The degree to which yeast flocculates is dependent on many factors, including the specific gravity of the beer, the gas pressure over the beer, the ambient temperature, and some biological properties particular to the yeast strain; some beers will never drop bright by themselves.

Some breweries make available rack bright beer, which is cask-conditioned beer that has been dropped bright at the brewery and then racked . transferred, to a new container for shipment. Rack bright beer generally costs slightly more than ordinary beer, all else being equal, but requires less preparation time and care at the point of serving; in particular, dropping bright requires that the beer be left undisturbed to settle, as jarring or shaking its container will re-suspend the yeast.

Any beer which has been dropped bright or fined will have a layer of yeast sediment at the bottom of its storage vessel.

Fining [ edit ]

Finings can be introduced during the production of beer in order to induce it to drop bright more readily. For British beers, the most common fining agent is isinglass. and most breweries producing Real Ale introduce isinglass into the shipment cask so that the beer will drop bright readily upon the cask's being breached; this process can take from several hours to two or three days and may require the addition of supplementary finings by the cellarman .

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Premium quality brite tank with cooling jacket for beer carbonation and serving. Tank shipped from our California warehouse. for freight quote please email zip code, quantity & capacity.

• AISI 304 stainless steel sanitary construction & polished 240 grit.

• Design pressure 15 psi

• interior shell thickness 11 gauge, clading 14 gauge and insulation 3" polyurethan

• Shadowless side manway

• Dish bottom with cooling jacket on cone

• Racking port with rotating racking arm and butterfly valve.

• CIP Arm with spray ball

• Carbonation Stone, PRV, butterfly valve, sample valve, pressure gauge, thermometer, clamp & gasket included

Bright beer tanks reviewed with Stone Brewing’s Mitch Steele

Stone Brewing Co. brewmaster Mitch Steele enjoys a beer in front of the brewhouse at the company’s Escondido, Calif. headquarters. We thank Stone Brewing for all of these amazing photos.

A young beer must be properly conditioned and stored if it’s to become a mature, well-rounded, fermented and carbonated craft beverage. Specifically when the fermentation process is complete, a newborn beer needs to be filtered, chilled, carbonated and aged into a sophisticated and seasoned draft, which takes a variety of vessels and processes. There’s not one particular way to do this. A uni-tank is a fermentation tank that has both primary and secondary fermenting and aging functions in one tank. Other craft breweries will use a conical fermentation vessel and a conditioning tank for aging and maturing.

Whatever the process, after conditioning (which can take anywhere from one to six or more weeks), the beer is filtered to remove any remaining yeast and large proteins. That clarified beer is known as bright beer because of its non-cloudy nature. That bright beer is then transferred to a bright beer tank. Often called a “brite” beer tank, serving tank or secondary tank, a bright tank is the vessel in which beer is placed after primary fermentation and filtering, so it can further mature, clarify and carbonate, as well as be stored for kegging, bottling, canning and packaging. In brewpubs, bright beer tanks can even do double-duty as serving vessels.

While the engineering and function of a bright tank isn’t nearly as complicated as a brewhouse or bottling line, these vessels have important functions and maintenance items. For instance, temperature is very important. While your typical fermenter needs to run at 68 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit, you want your beer and bright tank at 32 degrees Fahrenheit to get it to carb up properly. Bright tanks must be engineered to be cold and hold pressure, sometimes act as post filtration and be easy to clean and service.

To learn more about the function, maintenance and manufacturers of bright tanks, we reached out to a few of the best craft breweries in America to get their insights and advice on these important brewing vessels. Escondido, Calif.’s Stone Brewing Co. is the 10th largest craft brewery in the United States (by 2012 beer sales volume), according to the Brewers Association. The company has been averaging about 41 percent year-to-year growth over the past 16 years, and today its impressive portfolio of craft beer is currently distributed to 37 states, plus Washington, D. C. as well as exported to the United Kingdom, Sweden, Japan and Singapore.

When considering the purchase of new bright beer tank or a forest of tanks like in the Stone Brewing photo above, the quality of tank construction, the relationship with the manufacturer, lead time and price are all important.

When it comes to planning, making and creating that beer, brewmaster Mitch Steele has his hands in all of Stone’s bold craft creations, working beneath president, original brewmaster and co-founder Steve Wagner. Back in 2006, Stone wisely hired Steele from Anheuser-Busch; he was assistant brewmaster for Anheuser-Busch’s Merrimack, N. H. facility. Steele has well over 10 years of mega-production brewing experience and 14 years of craft brewing experience, making him uniquely qualified to talk about almost any facet of the brewing process. We asked Steele to give us some insights on bright tanks, and he kindly obliged with the excellent Q&A below.

Craft Brewing Business ( CBB ): Mitch, again, thanks for taking the time to talk. We loved the story we did with you on Stone Levitation Ale back in March, which got a great response from our readers. Today, we’d like to talk about bright beer tanks and their function in the brewing process. First off, can you in your own words explain what exactly a bright beer tank does, and what it specifically does at Stone?

Steele: A bright tank is the storage tank of package-ready beer. From this tank, we ensure that the beer is analytically sound and that the taste is exceptional. Once that is complete, we designate the beer as ‘released for packaging,’ and the team that operates the bottling line and/or keg line can package the beer.

CBB . How many bright tanks does Stone currently use, and how much capacity do those tanks have?

Steele: We have 13 in service. Their total capacity is 6,660 barrels [bbls]. We don’t have secondary fermentation at Stone Brewing Co. We primary ferment and age in the same conical tank, then centrifuge and filter the beer into the bright tank.

CBB . What are the brands of those bright tanks?

Steele: Our tanks are from Mueller in Springfield, Mo. They build quality brewing equipment, and we’ve worked with them for years.

Stone Brewing uses bright beer tanks from Mueller in Springfield, Mo. From this angle, those tanks look like amazing industrial art.

CBB . Besides quality equipment, what else drew you to Mueller? How important is it to have a good relationship with a particular vessel manufacturer?

Steele: Customer service, on-time delivery and of course, price, are major factors in making the decision of which supplier to use.

CBB . When buying bright tanks, what particulars should play into a brewery’s buying formula?

Steele: I would say the quality of tank construction, the relationship with the manufacturer, lead time and price. Also, do your homework. Check things like your glycol heat transfer calculations and make sure the glycol jackets are properly sized, so that your refrigeration system is properly sized to keep the beer as cold as it should be.

CBB . What advice would you give a new brewer or brewhouse when operating a bright tank?

Steele: We check the CO2 levels in the beer stored in bright tanks every day. It’s a good way to find out if your pressure relief valve [PRV] or some other valve is leaking. Try to maintain constant CO2 pressure in the headspace on the beer. Altering the pressure changes the carbonation levels of the beer.

CBB . What advice would you give someone when it comes to cleaning and maintaining a batch of bright tanks?

Steele: There are a lot of good brewery cleaning chemical suppliers out there. If you find a good acid cleaner, you can leave the tank charged with CO2 during cleaning and not waste the gas. Caustic cleaners require the blow down of CO2 and re-gassing the tank to purify it after the cleaning. Caustic cleaners react with CO2, which then neutralizes the caustic. Also, when working with cleaning chemicals, we mandate safety goggles and elbow-length gloves.

CBB . Along with making great beers, Stone continues to expand its operations to serve and distribute those beers. I noticed that your second farm-to-table restaurant, Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens — Liberty Station, is open for business. Can you tell us a little bit about San Diego’s Liberty Station, the restaurant and the shiny new brewhouse you have there?

The Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens – Liberty Station just opened and its pretty magnificent; it’s 55,000 sq ft and includes two bocce ball courts, a movie courtyard, private banquet rooms and garden and outdoor patio space.

Steele: We opened the doors to Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens — Liberty Station on May 15, and started brewing on the 10-bbl brewhouse shortly before that. We are really excited to finally have a space where we can brew special, one-off beers that we can’t brew on our larger system. We’ve already made some unique brews that are on tap at the restaurant. A few we have brewing now include: Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens — Liberty Station Angry and Wit, a wit IPA brewed with lemon verbena and coriander; Stone Brewing Bistro & Gardens — Liberty Station 12/15 IPA, a session IPA brewed with four unique hop varieties for the Ales for ALS fundraising program; Stone Delicious IPA which will be poured at the Oregon Brewers Festival; and Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens — Liberty Station Matt’s Thrill Rye’d IPA, a rye IPA that will be served at the restaurant.

The restaurant is pretty magnificent — 55,000 sq ft and includes two bocce ball courts, a movie courtyard, private banquet rooms and garden and outdoor patio space. The restaurant is in the now-historic Naval Training Center so there is a lot of unique architecture, but we were still able to add the signature Stone Brewing Co. look, which includes slabs of granite, water features, plants, refurbished wood, metal and, of course, stone!

CBB . Along with Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens — Liberty Station, Stone’s been busy adding capacity at its Escondido brewery, maintaining and expanding its offerings at Stone Farms which supplies all its produce to the restaurants and the Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens being built in Terminal 2 of the San Diego International Airport. But what about plans for a second big brewery? A few years ago, Stone published a formal Request for Proposal to evaluate potential sites for a brewhouse in Europe. Is that idea still on the table?

Steele: I would say it’s still on the table, but it’s been put at the bottom of the pile because of all the current and future projects that we’ve been busy focusing on. In addition to what you mention above, we are almost ready to move into Stone Packaging Hall located next to our brewery in Escondido. It will house our bottling and kegging lines, some offices, 13 bright tanks for now — we will relocate eight that are currently in the main brewery building — a quality assurance laboratory and equipment storage. This will be a large transition, but once completed it will provide us with additional room to hopefully increase production.

Carbonation stone. The gas is attached to the stone (basically a long, stainless-steel rod with a bazillion microscopic holes in it) and it diffuses more easily into the beer.

Having a tank that can get really cold helps immensely. Carbonation is often done with a bright tank around 35F. maybe slightly higher if it is a serving tank in a pub.

If you have a situation where you are actually carbing that rapidly (and hour or three), the typical procedure is to set the pressure relief to blow off at the required pressure for the desired volumes of CO2 and set the pressure on the stone at around 30psi. The gas will rapidly diffuse through the beer and gas will blow off through the relief valve while the head pressure ensures that a certain amount stays in solution. You can carb beer quickly this way, but it wastes a lot of CO2. In a commercial setting the cost of the lost gas is offset by production schedules and the need to get beer ready to go as soon as possible.

The ideal method, when using a stone, is to put the pressure required for the volumes of CO2 needed on the stone and wait a few days. This carbs quicker than by head pressure alone, cutting time in half or so depending.

Another slightly less common method of carbing commercially is the use of a spundig valve. This allows the brewer to carbonate during primary fermentation using the CO2 that is produced in the process. Basically, the tank is capped with a pressure relief valve that is set to blow off a the level required for a given volume of CO2 in the beer. By the time primary fermentation is finished, the beer is carbonated.

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Brite Beer Tanks

Carbonate and Serve

Brite beer tanks are used for carbonation of beer, as a tax determination tank, and as a serving tank. Stout Tanks and Kettles offers Brite Beer tanks that are ideal for nanobreweries. These tanks can be used for storing and serving carbonated beer and eliminate the hassle of cleaning beer kegs. Like all of our products, we only use sanitary fittings and hardware. See below for details. Many sizes are possible, if you don't see the size you want, please contact us with your needs.