YOUR BREWHOUSE UTILITIES – BREWERY ELECTRICAL REQUIREMENTS

Once the brewing equipment layout and the design have been confirmed, we can start working on the different utilities which will be whipping around the brewery. 

This includes:

﹒Electrical

﹒Steam

﹒Water 

﹒Glycol

﹒Gas (Compressed Air, Oxygen, CO2)

In this article –we will be looking at what to consider for all your brewery electrical requirements, as you know, If the prepared electricity is not enough, it will bring great trouble to the installation of beer brewing equipment

VOLTS AND HERTZ

When we start a brewery project one of the first emails we should be confirm the following:

Single-Phase Electrical Voltage:
Three-Phase Electrical Voltage:
Hertz:

This is absolutely critical. We order all of our beer brewing equipment (motors, pumps, etc) and design our control panels, to work with the required voltage(s) and hertz.

For instance, we have produced three-phased brewing equipment to work on 208V and 480V at 60Hz for the US and 415V at 50Hz for the New Zealand and Australia and 400V at 50Hz for European countries.

If this information is not communicated correctly, you could end up with unusable equipment. Which, as we can all imagine, is a very costly mistake, so before we design and arrange the production for the beer brewing equipment, we confirm the electrical power supply with our customer again and again.

Pro Tip: When looking for possible brewery sites, make sure to ask if there is three-phase electrical power running into the building. This is because pumps and motors work better running on three-phased electrical – especially as they increase in power.

Once this is determined you should confirm the electrical current for each system. This is a critical gate check for location consideration.

BREWERY ELECTRICAL LAYOUT

In our electrical layout drawing (provided for all brewery projects) we list all the beer brewing equipment which will be drawing power – and the wattage required.

From there, the local electrician(s) can help confirm if you have enough current coming into the building to meet the demand.

If not, you might need to run more power to the location which can be costly. If you have equipment coming from other manufacturers, we are more than happy to incorporate them into our drawings.

For every brewery project we have done thus far, we have directly worked with the electrician(s) to include as much detail as possible in the drawing to indicate placement, connection type and any special requirements.

We also provide each customer with a list of the electrical loads required by the beer brewing equipment, so that they know how many watts and amps they need to run this set beer brewing equipment.

Electrical wire coloring differs around the world, for example: Us/Canada 480V 3 phase cable Color: Fire wire: Brown, orange and yellow. Zero line: gray. Ground wire: green; 240V3 phase cable Colors: Live cable: black, red, and blue. Zero line: White. Ground wire: green!

BREWERY ELECTRICAL DESIGN DRAWINGS

We also provide design drawings for control and electrical cabinets for brewhouses, mobile pumps, CIP carts, etc.

This includes the button configuration – with labeling for control cabinets and more importantly electrical wiring diagrams for the cabinets.

This prevents confusion on what will be controlled from where – and the naming as local nomenclatures differ around the world for beer brewing equipment.

The electrical diagrams will help the local team to plan out not only their route for the power cables around the brewery, but also need to consider electrical wiring for the different components around the brewery (such as pumps, motors, solenoids, sensors, etc.)

As an example – the brewery’s electrical cabinet will need to be wired to all components of the brewhouse equipment. If this includes the HLT and it is located on the other side of the brewery, then cables will need to be run for the pump, solenoid(s) and thermocouples.

NFE solution 

There is a lot to think about with respect to the electrical requirements of beer brewing equipment.

This is because you also need to consider both power and controls – which all should be identified ahead of time.

We have so many years experience for designing the electrical schematic diagram for beer brewing equipment, we are continuously improving after each brewery project. Let us bring this experience into your project, to help it go smoothly!