Four-vessel brewhouse for DC Brau

In October 2016, mechanical engineering company GEA delivers its first Craft-Star ^TM 4-vessel brewhouse to Washington, D.C. The system is scheduled to begin commercial operation early next year. The customer is DC Brau Brewing Company, a highly renowned manufacturer of craft beers in the U.S. capital.

The Craft-Star is specifically designed for medium-sized specialty breweries with batch sizes of 40 hl (35 U.S. barrels) hot wort. The system was previously equipped with two or three vessels (mash tun kettle, lauter tun and combined whirlpool/wort kettle – depending on the configuration) and has been retrofitted with a separate whirlpool by the GEA brewery experts in Kitzingen/Germany. Now, up to seven brews a day are possible. The basic configuration already allowed for five brews a day. The Craft-Star is preassembled and tested in Kitzingen as a compact plug & play system with process piping, instrumentation and a semi-automatic control system. Commissioning on site just takes a few days.

Due to the large share of high-quality special malts in use at most craft beer breweries, the extract efficiency of the brewhouse, based on the lauter tun efficiency, is essential to business success: The extract yield of up to 98 percent makes the Craft-Star a leader in this discipline. “We are truly impressed with the plant’s capacity," says Jeff Hancock, co-founder of DC Brau Brewing Company. “We were searching for a versatile brewhouse suitable for the efficient production of high-quality beer for our growing brewery." Brandon Skall, founding partner of DC Brau Brewing Company, adds: "The Craft-Star system will allow us to continue to expand distribution of our award-winning flagship beers, while giving us the flexibility to experiment with new beer styles and recipes.”