World of Beer Craft: Ziemann delivers turnkey brewhouse to Scotland’s BrewDog PLC

BrewDog will soon be making beer with Ziemann equipment. From left to right: Arend Muggen, Volker Mewes, Karl Butzmann, Neil Simpson, Martin Dickie, Thorsten Schwanzer and Hanspeter Geigle after signing the contract in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

The highly creative and successful Scottish craft brewery BrewDog PLC will significantly expand its production capacity by the beginning of 2016. As part of this project, Ziemann International GmbH will implement a complete turnkey production block including a new brewing line and cold block area. The contract was signed with BrewDog PLC at the Ziemann headquarters in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

BrewDog was founded by the friends James Watt and Martin Dickie in 2007. Since then, the brewery company is moving in only one direction: Upward. In its first year, the co-founders brewed 900 barrels (bbl) in the then tiny brewery; today, the annual production volume has increased significantly to 77,000 bbls. Over the last few years, the brewery has attracted international attention for its inventiveness: BrewDog successfully raised a large amount of capital, required for the brewery’s expansion, through a crowdfunding campaign called “Equity for Punks.”

Since 2009, more than 14,000 “fanvestors” have invested in the brewery via this campaign. The brewery is currently running its fourth round of funding; Equity for Punks IV aims to raise £25m from public investment. Another event that made headlines was the competition for the strongest beer in the world. With “The End of History,” BrewDog raised the bar to 55 percent alcohol by volume.

In order to keep up with global reach, BrewDog will build a second brewery plant in a new 4,500 m2 building at their site in Ellon, Aberdeenshire. Ziemann will supply, install, automate and commission the complete process technology, from the milling plant to the integration of the bottling plant.

”We are extremely proud that one of the most innovative craft brewers will produce its beer with our equipment,” said Thorsten Schwanzer, sales director of Western Europe at Ziemann. “A decisive factor for being awarded the contract certainly was the fact that we offered the technology both in the brewhouse and in the cold block, required for the desired flexibility and quality, as a complete package.”

Ziemann will equip the milling plant with a six-roller grist mill as well as with the required silos. The brewhouse with the mash vessel Colibri and the lauter tun Lotus is designed for 12 brews per day, with a cast-out wort volume of 255 bbls each. With regard to the wort boiling, BrewDog decided in favor of an external boiler in order to be able to produce even smallest charges. In addition, the new brewhouse will be equipped with a spent grains silo, first wort vessel, hop dosing vessels, whirlpool, wort aeration system, water house and a brewhouse CIP system.

In the cold block area, Ziemann will implement a yeast cellar inclusive of yeast propagation, yeast storage and pitching tanks; a fermentation/storage cellar consisting of eight CCTs with a capacity of 1,500 bbls, one bright beer tank cellar with two 1,500-bbl. bright beer tanks as well as another CIP plant. A special feature in this area will be the new Ziemann system for cold hopping. The brewhouse as well as the cold block will be automated with the Braumat system V7.

The start of installation of the new plant at BrewDog is scheduled for August 2015, with the first brew anticipated in the first quarter of 2016. With this expansion stage, BrewDog will be able to brew an additional volume of approximately 170,000 bbls per year.