WARNING: For true craft beer nerds, the links on this site are NSFW.
Smuttynose, a New Hampshire craft brewery, announced the arrival of its new brewhouse and bottle filler on Dec. 8. The equipment was shipped from northern Italy and southern Germany to Hamburg, where it was loaded onto a boat. The first leg of the sea voyage was from Hamburg, Germany, to Reykjavik, Iceland, where the containers where transferred to another boat for the transatlantic voyage to Portland, Maine.
But don’t let this brewing equipment installation news be just another few words on a screen. The team at Smuttynose has set up a webcam so all of us can follow the installation process from beginning to end – live. If you didn’t click the previous link, click this one, to check it out.
Both pieces of equipment are part of the Krones group. The brewhouse was made by Steinecker in Bavaria. It is a fully automated, 100-hectoliter, four-vessel CombiCube system that’s capable of producing eight full brews in 24 hours. Smuttynose notes it will not grow to that output for quite some time.
The bottling equipment was made with German technology in Italy by Kosme. It is a 60 fill valve, double pre-evacuation filler capable of doing 450 bottles per minute, though the Smuttynose line will max out around 350. Smuttynose also has a new labeler.
Both pieces of equipment feature a great deal of automation and instrumentation, which provide an extreme amount of consistency in the process, leading to a higher level of beer quality in regards to shelf stability, efficiency and flavor.
