We're Taking Our New Beer Centrifuge For A Spin!

As mothers everywhere always used to tell us, patience is a virtue. Our brewers have always known this fact all too well because brewing the perfect pint of Westerham beer takes time.

But what if it could take a little less time?

What if we could speed up part of the brewing process and still make delicious, high quality, quaffable beer for you all to enjoy?

That’s where our brand-new beer centrifuge comes in. Installed just this week, it’s ready to transform our brewing process and the brewhouse is buzzing with excitement!

This is the point where you wonder what a beer centrifuge is, but you’re also probably too afraid to ask because you’ve just sat down with your morning cup of coffee, and you aren’t wide awake enough for a full-blown physics demonstration. So, let’s get straight to the point and avoid making our heads spin.

Ordinarily, we would rely on good old-fashioned gravity to separate the heavy solids (such as yeast and hops) from the beer. We can add a product called finings to the beer to hurry the process along, but it can still take days for the solids to sink to the bottom of the tank. However, if we pump the beer into the centrifuge instead, we can clarify it at a far greater speed. In a nutshell, the container spins so rapidly that it creates a centrifugal force that is thousands of times stronger than gravity. Instead of sinking slowly to the bottom, the solids are thrust outwards against the wall of the container, leaving the clear beer in the middle free to flow out through a separate port.

Not only will our new beer centrifuge save us time, but it’ll also save some extra beer too. When gravity is used to settle a tank, a significant amount of beer gets trapped in the thick layer of solids – known as the trub - at the bottom. The centrifuge can spin the trub to extract that trapped beer, so it can make its way into your glasses instead of down the drain.

That’s all great, of course, but what really matters to our customers – and by extension what matters most to us – isn’t quantity, but quality. And there’s no such thing as quality without consistency. The precise, mechanical nature of this new process eliminates the more unpredictable factors involved with settling beer with gravity alone, such as ambient temperature or the specific gravity of a particular beer. This means we have more control over the settling process and the baseline of residual solids left in the brew, helping us to ensure we always make the very best beer every single time. Residual solids left suspended in beer, such as yeast cells or hop particles, can alter the flavour as they degrade over time. Our centrifuge will allow us to control the quantity of residual solids, helping to extend the shelf life of our beer, so you can enjoy it for longer.

It’s also going to reduce our use of processing aids, like the finings we mentioned earlier. A brand-new toy that saves us time and money? No wonder the brewers are all so excited!

Want to find out more? Join us for a tour of the brewery on Saturday mornings, so we can tell you all about our latest bit of kit in person.