My German hosts were laughinglike Cadbury’s Smashmen

(Google them. Ed.) about the UKvirtually coming to a halt a weekearlier under just three inches of thewhite stuff. OK, it always snows inthe winter in Bavaria and they have asnow-clearing infrastructure tomatch – but the main solution to

getting about is winter tyres witha superior surface grip. If you donot use them, the insurance willnot pay out. There are around50 million cars in Germany sothe mind boggles at the thoughtof a quarter of a billionsummer tyres stacked upsomewhere awaiting the firstdaffodil to show its face!

Nürnberg and the adjacentcity of Fürth are in Franconia in

the north eastern corner of Bavaria,Germany’s first railway line linkedthem back in 1835 with a locomotivebuilt in Newcastle. Beerconsumption in Franconia is higherthan the German average with a highconcentration of breweries to match.

The Tuchers were one of the oldNürnberger patrician families andfounded a weissbier brewery, as wastheir aristocratic right, back in 1672.By the late twentieth century thebrewery was in the hands of Maerz,the grocers, while the PatrizierBrauerei in Fürth was owned by theQuelle retail chain. In 1995, theywere both bought by theInselkammer family. By 2003, thebrands but not the brewery foundtheir way into Brau und Brunnenand two years later into the

expanding Radeberger Group.Radeberger was the old East Germanbrand coming from a suburb ofDresden. The beer was onceexported by the communists to earnforeign currency but when the wallcame down in 1990, it was boughtby Binding BrauereiAG whichbelongs to the Oetker Group. In2002 Binding BrauereiAG wasrenamed as the Radeberger Gruppe.There are currently 16 breweriesunder the Radeberger banner and itsmarket share is Germany’s biggest at16%.

Like elsewhere there has beensteady consolidation but local cityrivalry remains high so to get the bestof both worlds, Radeberger built itsnewest brewery slap bang on theborder between the two cities. Thereis a line on the brewhouse wallmarking the boundary with the twocity coats of arms on the appropriatesides. It is Radeberger policy to sella series of national brands –Radeberger, Jever, Clausthaler andSchöfferhoferWeizen - but have astrong local presence with adiversity of regional beers ofdifferent styles including famousbrands like Tucher, DortmunderKronen, Ur-Krostizer, Freiberger,Brinkhoff, Stuttgarter Hofbräu, SionKölsch, Schlösser, Binding andAllgäuer under its German BeerCulture badge.

This positioning on the borderwas of course rather serendipitous asa logistics unit had been built on the9.4ha site in 1997 joined bypackaging back in 2003 andconnected to the existing brewery bythe world’s longest beer pipeline.Head Brewer BernhardWagemannexplained that the old plant was at

Schwabacher Strasse in downtownFürth some 4km away. The waterline was 170mm in diameter andthere were originally 3 × 100mmmains to transfer the beer over forpackaging. The water line held800hl and each beer line held 380hl.Thus a there and a back cleaningcirculation demanded a 1000hldetergent tank! The beer took onehour to arrive and then up to 90seconds to stop the flow as there wassuch momentum that valves had tobe closed very slowly indeed. Therewas one other problem in laying theHDPE plastic lines – the MainDonau Canal. The energetic (andfoolhardy) can leap across the Trentand Mersey Canal in Burton onTrent if they are so minded but thiswaterway is 55m wide with adraught to suit the huge river bargescarrying cargo between the Mainand Danube basins.You can get an

Brewer & Distiller International • May 2009 • www.ibd.org.uk

Brewery profile

18

by Roger Putman

Europe’s mostmodern breweryA new-build in Nürnberg

Tucher Bräu’s new plant was opened last Septemberand proved to be popular side show at the Brauexhibition with bus loads of eager visitors making theshort trip from the Nürnberg Messe. However youcannot learn a lot in a large party so I arranged aprivate visit with GEA Brewery Systems andA. Handtmann for a closer inspection; the trouble wasit was minus 14°C overnight with at least a foot ofsnow on the ground.

Tucher BräuTucherstrasse 10

90763 FürthGermany

www.tucher.de

idea of the massive structure wherethe road dips underneath it in a giantconcrete construction. The pipelineshad to pass 15m below the bottom ofthe canal and on the first attempt oneboring and concrete shroudingmachine had to be abandonedadding some €100,000 to the cost ofthe project. The water line is still inuse from the old brewery well butnow that the admin teams havemoved across to the new site, theSchwabacher Strasse buildings areawaiting redevelopment plans as aprime piece of real estate still ownedby the Inselkammers.

So the new plant, which has acapacity of 700,000hl, maintains thebrewing traditions of 337 yearswhile giving opportunities to usemodern technology to produce beermore efficiently and sustainably interms of energy and water usage.Tucher say it is the most modern

brewery inEurope. Thecontract withTuchenhagenBrewerySystems tomanage thewhole installationwas signed in June2007, the groundwas broken inSeptember and the firstbrew went through 50weeks later. Of course theproject had been in gestation foreighteen months before the buildingstarted. Mash filter or lauter? DE orcrossflow filtration? How to stabilisethe beer to a 36-week shelf life andonce you have decided what to buy,who do you buy it all from?BernhardWagemann was emphaticabout using a lauter tun. He has anall malt grist and asked why the filter

suppliers always provide a paddle toscrape the cloths when the machinesare supposed to work without humanintervention. He thought there wasenough anecdotal evidence aroundthat the saving in extract is lost byhaving to have a manual presenceduring graining operations.

Part of the samplingarray for the unitanksand bright beer tanks atthe new Tucher breweryin Nürnberg, Bavaria.

Brewer & Distiller International • May 2009 • www.ibd.org.uk

Brewery profile

19

Yeast storagetanks are kept

homogeneous bya pumped loop.

Furthermore it iswell known inGerman brewing

circles that Oettinger is replacing apair of Meuras with a Steineckerlauter tun at its Mönchengladbachplant. So a ten brew per day lautertun was specified producing 360hl at14°P. Huppmann supplied the brewplant. Since the order bothHuppmann and TuchenhagenBrewery Systems have officiallymerged into one company GEABrewery Systems.

The cross flow decision wasequally easy as it costs some €600per tonne to dispose of thekieselguhr waste and that is likely toincrease further in the future. KG, ofcourse, is not a limitless resource

either. Batch KG filtrations tend tostop after 10 hours of running whilecross flow can be run continuously24/7. Tucher does not stop as thereare three units, two operating andone waiting to go on line. There aresome 15 Tucher brands and so the 1-2hl mixing phase between qualitiesis an attractive reason for using thismodern technology.Alfa Lavalsupplied the crossflow filters.

Continuous stabilisationIf you use a continuous filtrationsystem why not use a continuousstabilisation system as well?Againthere are environmental advantagesin the long term and financialbenefits right from the start. Tucherhas bought Germany’s very first

CSS (Combined StabilisationSystem) from Handtmann not toomany miles down the road. There arecurrently nine units installedelsewhere in the world from SriLanka to Brazil. The CSS is placeddownstream of the filter so that yeastcannot block the receptors of theengineered agarose polysaccharide.These agarose beads with a diameterof 100 to 300 micron have sidechains designed to adsorb hazeforming beer proteins but also attractpolyphenols by hydrogen bonding atthe same time. The software sets upa bypass system based on acalibration curve according to therequired beer shelf life calculatedfrom laboratory 0 and 60°C cyclesbefore the beer haze reaches a hazeof 3°EBC. Initially only a small beerflow will pass through the agaroseand most will bypass but as the runproceeds and active sites areoccupied, the flow through the unitincreases until at the end none isbypassed. Thus the output is a flowof a uniform stabilised beer for theentire run. A second CSS modulethen comes on stream and the first isreactivated with a 4% cold causticregeneration for 120 minutesfollowed by a carbonated water rinseand a 100°C hot water sterilise, intotal 2.5 hours.

The unit operates at 200hl perhour and there is no risk of agarosecarry over downstream due to thepermanent retention of the adsorbermaterial within the module.A trapfilter would be needed on the beerhad it been KG filtered and also forthe water supply for CIP, in order toprotect the modules from particle

Zwei-stadte-Sudhaus –‘The two cities’brewhouse’ – the newHuppmann brewvessels showing the citycoats of arms of bothFürth and Nürnberg(inset) either side of theboundary which runsthrough the brewhouse.

Brewery profile

ingress. This is because there is little∆p across the CSS unit so nothing istrapped and will pass downstreamwithout such protection. The agaroseis only replaced after 500regenerations, usually by aHandtmann technician who will alsoconduct a series of machine checksand change seals etc. Has this been asuccessful choice? Currently only byfurther forcing tests as the first beerfrom the brewery start up inSeptember 2008 is not at the end ofits shelf life yet!

Due to annual maintenance beingin progress, I was not able to viewthe 50,000bph KHS bottle line, the240 kphAlbert Frey keg line or theinnovative 120 unit per hourCoolKeg filling line. CoolKeg is adevelopment by Cool-Systems KEGGmbH also headquartered nearTucher in Fürth and the idea wasembraced early by Tucher. The firstTucher containers were exhibited atthe 2001 drinktec. The CoolKeg isavailable in sizes from 10 to 20 litresof beer. A water-saturated fleeceunder a vacuum is wrapped aroundthe central beer reservoir. An outerchamber filled with zeolite, alsounder a vacuum, is separated fromthe centre chamber by an externallyoperated valve. Once the user opensthis valve, the difference in pressureallows the water vapour to flow fromthe fleece to the zeolite where it isabsorbed. The evaporative enthalpyextracted from the fleece turns theremaining water to ice thus coolingthe beer. It takes about an hour forthe keg to cool down. The CoolKegcan be regenerated by a 30 minutebake in an oven at 400°C as part of

the refilling operation. The 10 litreversion is a popular seller over theinternet for Tucher using a ‘nextday’ courier.

TraditionsbrauereiThe pale cream of the new buildingswith a prominent sign ‘TucherTraditionsbrauerei’ is a landmarkabove the sprawl of the many motorcar showrooms in the area. High atone end with the water handling andmalt silos, two storey in the centrewith the brewhouse, filtration, CSS,centrifuges, yeast handling and thetall unitank vessels bodies in theopen air down the far end. Thecontrol room is on the ground floorbeside the process area and there isa well equipped multi-roomedlaboratory facility on the first floor.GEA Brewery System’s Michael

Roche was on hand toexplain the overall set up.

It starts with a 20t perhour Millstar wetconditioning mill andaround 5.5 tonnes of malt. The maltfrom the mill hopper is sprayed withwater at 65°C or it could be weakworts. In a chamber above the mainpair of rollers, the moisture of thehusk increases to 15–18% to makethe grain more pliable as it passesinto the mash. The Fürth water at15dh (deutsche Haerte or Germanhardness which is around 250ppmas CaO) is RO treated and CaCl2 isinjected before the main mashingwater hits the grain. Such ‘watertreatment’ is permissible under theterms of the Reinheitsgebot. Themash tun, lauter and copper are allfed from below to reduce oxygen

Brewery profile

GEA Ecomatrixin action.The unitank supplymains snake throughthe vessel supportskirts with short stubsbetween the base of thecone and the valves(inset).

Sustainability throughout the brewing process – hot and cold.Huppmann and Tuchenhagen Brewery Systems merge to form GEA Brewery Systems.

GEA Brewery Systems Huppmann Tuchenhagen

Heinrich-Huppmann-Straße 1, 97318 Kitzingen, GermanyPhone +49 9321 303-101, Fax +49 9321 303-603info @ gea-brewery.com, www.gea-brewery.com

pick up. The mash tun agitators arelow shear and vessel jackets raisethe temperature from 64°C through70°C to 75°C.After 120 minutes themash passes to the lauter tundiagonally opposite. This Lauterstarhas a 250kg/m2 loading. GEA haswidened the run-off cones in orderto put lower suction pressure on thebed above them and has alsoincreased the depth from the falsebottom to the base to help even wortflow. So run-off is more even,velocities are slower and extractsare better. The wort is collected in apre-run vessel and flashed up to96°C using water heated by thecopper vapour condenser when thecopper is ready for the batch.

The Jetstar wort-boiling systemhas an internal calandria and a lowerspreader to direct wort back belowthe wort surface for improvedmixing or above it via a higherspreader for volatiles removal andevaporation. This process is helpedalong by the dynamic low-pressureboil set up at the vapour condenserwhich will release a slight toppressure four or five times to

Brewery profile

Below theHuppmannbrewhouseAbove, from left to rightacross both pages:

The Millstar.

The mash vessel.

Lauter tun.

Copper with the AntonPaar densitometer tocontrol evaporation.

Whirlpool.

Wort heat exchanger.

Beerprocessing atTucherAbove right:Centrifuging…andextreme right: filtration– by Alfa Laval.

Right: The blending andcarbonation systemwith the inlet and outletbuffers tanks behindthe filter on the left andCSS on the right.

Centre right: TheHandtmann continuousCSS works at 200hl/hl.There are twochambers, one onstream and the otherbeing cleaned or readyto go. The tanks at theback are for CIP of theother filter systems.

Brewer & Distiller International • May 2009 • www.ibd.org.uk22

encourage vigorous boiling andenhanced stripping of unwantedDMS. There is a pumped sampleloop through anAnton Paar densitymeter to control the evaporationprocess. Hops are mainly extractdosed from a Decker cabinet butthere is a facility to dose pellets asrequired. The wort is cast to thewhirlpool diagonally opposite.There are three take-off points allwithin 1.5m of the bottom.Arotating device in the floor will spraythe trub cone to the outlet and backover to the spent grains in the lautertun from the next brew.

The ground floor also houses thehot brewhouse CIP vessels and apair of 175hl lactic acid fermenters

kept under a CO2 atmosphere.Aresidue from the last acid batch istopped up with aliquots of wort fromeach brew which matches the acidrich broth added back to the copperto reduce mash pH in aReinheitsgebot friendly manner.Bacteria grow at 48°C and by thetime the working tank is almostempty, the new one is readyto dose.

A GEA Ecoflex heatexchanger cools the wort at500hl/hr to 8°C for lagerfermentation and 15°C forwheat beer production. Airis injected to oxygenate theyeast. There are two smalland two large yeastpropagators for the lageryeast is used for three orfour generations while theweizen yeast is used just theonce. Interestingly such isthe confidence in thepipework and its cleaningthat wort for propagation is

collected cold without anysterilising treatment. Air is injectedinto the propagation by a lance inthe vessel base and controlled by aflow meter. The same room housesthree yeast storage tanks which arekept homogeneous via a pumpedloop and there are a further threespent yeast tanks nearby.

Brewery profile

ProLeiT at the drinktec,

Munich/Germany

14th – 19th September 2009,

Hall A4, Booth 624

certifi ed by experience

Process control technology. MES included.

www.proleit.comwww.proleit.com

Brewer & Distiller International • May 2009 • www.ibd.org.uk 23

There are 28 fermenters byZiemann. Six at 1300hl and four at2600hl were relocated from the oldsite and 18 more large ones werenew. The vessels operate asunitanks. The twoAlfa Lavalcentrifuges were also relocated. The17 BBTs of various sizes were

already in place to supply theexisting packaging lines. GEA’sEco-matrix vessel valving system isused throughout the unitank block.GEA looked at the trend towardfeeding large valve blocks from aseries of vessels and proved that theambient temperature conditions in a100mm pipe containing a lot ofyeast and protein was leading tounwanted off flavours. The conceptwas redesigned to keep the distancefrom vessel outlet to the valves asshort as possible. These shorterstubs allow mixing back with thevessel contents due to thetemperature differential andsophisticated software can calculateexact push out volumes and thuslose less beer and use less water.Space is also saved as the piping forwort, yeast, water, CIP and the twobeer out lines snake around theroom in and out of the vesselsupport skirts. Deaerated water issupplied by a 130hl/hr GEA Diesseldeaeration plant using packedcolumns and CO2 stripping atambient temperature.

Unitanks and BBTs are sampledcentrally from an array of valves.While the system is not loss free, thesampling program ensures that adefined sample volume is takenfrom each tank in order to minimizeproduct loss. The sterile sample canbe taken to the lab for off-linedensity measurement which canthen be fed manually into theProLeiT SCADA process controlsoftware which controls alloperations.

The Tucher Brewery is fullyautomated with the newVersion 8 ofProLeiT’s process control systembrewmaxx. The whole plant iscontrolled by three operators in thecentral control room not onlycovering malt intake to filling lines

supply but also the control ofutilities. This follows thephilosophy of the Radeberger Groupto have a complete centralised viewof utility consumption so that energymanagement strategy is embeddedin the process control. The ProLeiTinstallation supplies MESfunctionalities with an integratedmaterial management of allconsumption, production and stockfigures of the process. Reporting,together with the traceability of thebatches through the processcompletes the picture. ThebrewmaxxVisuRecorder offers areplay of the process in the operatorscreens for the last three monthswith the complete status informationof all components; useful fordiagnostics as well as foroptimisation.

The total investment at the newsite is in excess of €21 million andthe new brewery was probablyerected in a world record timethanks to the planning by GEABrewery Systems and the close co-operation with the Tucher team.Water usage is 3.5hl per hl which is51% less than previously. Electricityusage is 48% lower than at the oldplant and gas is 44% less. Tuchersay that it is too early to releaseabsolute energy consumptionfigures.

I hope the 300 visitors from theVLB conference planned forNürnberg in early March had asgood a visit as I had to Tucher Bräu.BraumeisterWagemann wasdreading the influx of brewersasking damned fool questions, justlike me, and crawling all over hispristine equipment! �

Right: The brewhouseend of the new TucherBräu plant.

Below: A computerimpression of the plantlayout

Bottom: The 22m tall,4.1m diameter Ziemannunitanks and a spentyeast tanker beingfilled.

Brewer & Distiller International • May 2009 • www.ibd.org.uk

Brewery profile

24

The other Nürnberg brewerybelonging to Radeburger is now theLederer microbrewery andrestaurant.