Report
Higher output, greater
variety of flavors
Danish craft brewery benefits from beer centrifuge
Small but excellent: Amager Bryghus is a Danish independent
brewery specialized on craft beer. It is located
near Copenhagen and has constantly been ranked
among the top 100 breweries in the world for the past
years. This is especially remarkable considering that the
small enterprise has only been founded in 2007. The two
friends and craft beer enthusiasts Morten Valentin
Lundsbak and Jacob Storm, now CEO and Head Brewer,
decided to turn their passion into a business back then.
The Danish brewery’s key to success is the continuous
development of premium beers and ales of distinctive
tastes, which are exported to more than 20 countries. To
meet the rising demands, Amager Bryghus has already
scaled up production capacity several times. Today, the
brewery uses 12 single-brew tanks and 12 double-brew
tanks, with a maximum brew size of 12 hl each.
Morten
Valentin
Lundsbak is
CEO of
Amager
Bryghus.
Centrifugal brew separators are normally
used to separate any residual
yeast, hops and flavor additives from
the beer. This solution is faster and
more economical compared to settling
tanks.
More beer from every brewing
process
As Alfa Laval beer centrifuges have
proven to be effective in operations all
over the world, Amager Bryghus de-
The compact
separator Brew
80 allows for
higher output
and a greater
variety of
flavors.
cided to install the separator Brew 80.
The compact skid-mounted highspeed
module is used as a clarifier to
remove the hop particles from the dry
hopped beers that constitute about
80% of production. This cold centrifugation
process results in beers of consistent
top quality. In addition, the
separator enabled a significant increase
in output, since it allows to regain
more beer from the brew tanks.
Thus, Amager Bryghus gets 6-10%
more beer out of each brewing process,
meaning that the Brew 80 clarifier
pays off in only 24-30 months.
Exploring new territory in
beer – and separation
The performance boost, however, is
not the only way the Amager Bryghus
beer enthusiasts benefit from Brew 80.
The Danish craft brewers are strong
in experimenting with completely new
flavors rarely seen in mainstream
beers. "Brew 80 allows us to create
even more creative and versatile flavors,“
says CEO Morten Valentin
Lundsbak. The friends use unusual
ingredients such as ground coffee (for
producing certain stouts) or orange
peel and cherries. The ground coffee
in particular is very hard to remove,
resulting in constant clogging problems
starting at the fermenter and
continuing throughout the filling line.
Morten Valentin Lundsbak: "Now,
Brew 80 handles that task in a very
effective and reliable manner and we
do not have to deal with the annoying
struggle of clogged filters anymore.“
Amager Bryghus‘ unconventional approach
to beer brewing has posed new
challenges to Alfa Laval centrifugal
separation technology and at the same
(Pictures: Alfa Laval)
24 BREWING AND BEVERAGE INDUSTRY · 2/2022