Projeto e construção de um sistema de resfriamento de mosto para uma nanocervejaria com foco no desperdício mínimo de água

Abstract

The brewing industry has followed the same standards and steps for centuries, having only incorporated new technologies into its processes. The beer craft industry has been expanding in Brazil with new breweries constantly pursuing innovation and quality in their products. One of the main steps in the beer manufacturing process is wort cooling after the boil, essential to avoid defects in the final product. Existing wort cooling methods for nanobreweries and microbreweries are expensive because they require high investments that are only justified by high volumes of production. In view of a lack of cooling systems that efficiently attends to the needs of nanobreweries and microbreweries without wasting water, it is necessary to develop a solution that can meet such a demand. The objective of the study is to develop a cooling system for beer wort that attends to breweries’ technical requirements while, at the same time, avoids wasting water, an essential commodity in present society. Starting from a survey of a client’s needs which included essential technical requirements, a cooling system was designed and developed, and a prototype was built to carry out production tests. After the cooling process has finished, with the objective of testing the system, a satisfactory result was obtained, although with a small variation in the must temperature, due to factors that are described at the end of the present study. However, the obtained results are satisfactory for the technical requirements of the beer production.