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drinkworld Technology + Marketing 1/2021

Processing Schneider

Processing Schneider Weisse Brewery Perfects a Consistent Hygienic Plant Concept What is it with Bavaria? It is not easy to find another region where tradition and progress go hand in hand so effectively. The Schneider Weisse Brewery in Kelheim on the Danube is a telling example: Master brewer Hans-Peter Drexler and his team are pioneering a modern, holistic hygiene concept for their plant with GEA – just so they can keep brewing their beer specialty according to the original formula from 1872. With some 100 employees and a fully automated process plant, the Schneider Weisse brewery in Kelheim produces its classic top-fermented “Original Weissbier” and other wheat beer specialties with a total volume of 250,000 hl/year. This is Bavarian beer, “Bairisch” with an old-fashioned “I”, as master brewer Hans-Peter Drexler states with a twinkle in the eye. Like his predecessors, he has remained faithful to the 150-year-old original recipe of founding brewer Georg Schneider, because the authentic processes make a glass of Schneider Weisse a very special treat: In the fermenting cellar, the brewers scoop off the rising yeast in open vats where they can closely observe the fermentation process that much determines the aroma of Bavarian wheat beer. The green beer is then not heat-treated as usual, but instead is mixed with active yeast and unfermented wort for weeks of secondary fermentation in the bottle. Only when the cap is already in place does Schneider Weisse gain its desired alcohol and carbon dioxide content – and its important typical sensory characteristics. Hygiene as a challenge As the brewers in Kelheim are well aware, others have abandoned their traditional methods long ago since they make the production process susceptible to potential germ contamination. “Naturally, the demands have changed over time,” as Valve manifold with GEA VARIVENT® mixproof valves for yeast propagation and fermentation – Filling, Emptying, Recirculation, CIP return and Sterilization 18

Processing Drexler explains: “In the past, wheat beer was produced and consumed quickly. Today we want to keep the same traditional process, but the beer is exported to all corners of the world and is subject to completely different conditions and requirements.” For the last three decades, in his function as master brewer and production manager at Schneider Weisse, it has been up to Drexler to meet these challenges. He recognized the advantages of the modular GEA VARIVENT® valve system at an early stage, having heard good things about it while equipping a brewery in Greece. The Kelheim brewers, however, initially held back with far-reaching investments, even though sales markets and production volumes were growing all through the 1990s and logistics were becoming more complex. Around the turn of the millennium, the first additional varieties named “Helle Weisse”, “Kristall Weissbier” and “Leichte Weisse”, were established in the Schneider Weisse portfolio, and the introduction of a dealcoholized variant with a corresponding additional process stage was already being considered. Process modules and pipe connections had grown organically over the decades, while a concept for all this did not yet exist. For Drexler and the process expert Anton Ladenburger, who supported the brewery company as a GEA consultant, the realization was dawning that the Kelheim plant had to be completely rethought in order to meet the increased demands for sterility and safe CIP capability. The master plan drawn up “At that time, unusual quality problems were noticed, and that’s where it all began – in the hot wort area, of all places,” reports Drexler. “We always thought that ‘hot’ meant ‘not critical’, and so we first had to learn that contamination can occur there as in all other areas.” GEA expert Ladenburger identified previously unrecognized contamination and migration patterns in the piping, for example during the switching cycle of valves at Valve manifold with GEA VARIVENT® mixproof valves for yeast propagation with central feedback control and air supply distribution the beginning and end of process sequences, and he gave important impulses for the product-compatible drinkworld Technology + Marketing · March 2021 19

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