Items Needed for a Brewery - Pumps

Brew house pumps are the underappreciated workhorse of the brewery…until they stop working! The types, sizes, and quantities vary, but their function is to transfer liquid  will have at least two pumps, but sometimes three or four.

• The first is a water pump that transfers the heated water from the HLT, which can be filled directly from the water source, to the mash tun.

• The second is a wort pump to recirculate the wort  transfer the wort to the kettle. Since you are not recirculating and lautering at the same time, this pump can do double-duty.

• The third pump would be a dedicated kettle pump, which is used to recirculate the wort during the whirlpool. Each of these pumps are, most likely, going to be a centrifugal pump, which is fast and, when paired with right pump head design, easily able to handle hot water and hot, sticky wort. Their pumping speed can also be dialed up or down using a variable frequency drive (VFD).

In some cases, a system will include a dedicated sparging pump that uses a peristaltic action (as opposed to a centrifugal action) to push the water through the sparge arm. The advantage of a peristaltic pump is that they are positive displacement pumps, meaning that each revolution of the roller corresponds to a precise volume of liquid. This allows a set amount of sparging water to be used, helping to hit your target pre-boil volume and gravity. A second peri-pump is used to transfer wort from the mash tun to the kettle at the same rate that sparge water is being introduced, keeping the liquid level above the grain bed throughout the lautering process. While these are tried and true, a centrifugal pumps paired with a flow meter achieves the same result and is a more flexible, and lower maintenance, solution.

The last type of pump you might find is a diaphragm pump. Unlike the two styles above that are powered by electricity, diaphragm pumps are air operated. These are more often used in distilleries where explosion proof pumps are required, but can also be used in a brewery when grains are being transferred from a mash tun to either a dedicated lauter tun or a filter press.