How does the heating method affect the structure of the brewery?

Steam heated brewhouse

• Brewhouse structure: typical mash/lauter tun, kettle/whirlpool tun, hot liquor tank

• All of the three vessels are with jacket for steam heating. So the mash/lauter tun can also maintain the temperatures and heat the vessel directly for direct mashing out before lauter (no need to add water to rise the mash temperature to 78℃).

• Another advantage of steam heating is that the steam heating can heat gently and evenly without touching the wort, so it is easier to control the heating process and temperatures and the wort quality also better.

But the steam boiler installation cost much. So for brewery below 500L, you could consider the electric heating to save the budget.

Electric heated brewhouse

• Suitable brewhouse structure: mash/lauter/whirlpool tun, kettle tun, HLT

• The kettle and HLT are mounted with electric heating coils inside, so the brewmaster need to finish the mashing out via adding/mixing extra hot water with the mash to rise the temperature to 78℃ before lauter process.

• Because here is electric heating coils inside the kettle, so to not let the elements effect the whirlpool process, the whirlpool vessel is independent and it is stacked under the mash/lauter vessel (for the steam heating, the whirlpool function is combined with the kettle).

• For small volumes, usually to save the cost, the hot water tank is not included. The reason is: Because the whirlpool vessel is under the mash/lauter tun, so it can be also used as a buffer tank to hold the wort during the lauter process, so here is no need to empty the kettle immediately before lautering, so the kettle can act as a hot water tank temporarily for mashing and also sparging. When the complete lauter process is finished, we can then purge the kettle to hold the wort transferred from the buffer tank. But here are also two shortage without a hot liquor tank: If brew two batches per day, we will take longer time; The warmed water from the heat exchanger can not be recycled. So if the budget is ok, a HLT can make work easier.