Optimizing your beer brewing process with defoamers

Maintaining a comfortable profit margin has become a real struggle for beer brewers, regardless of size. They are facing ever-increasing economic obstacles and demands that affect the bottom line. Think of raw materials, energy and packaging: they have all increased dramatically in recent years. These days successful brewers are finding new ways to reduce costs, cut down on waste and improve efficiency.  We are happy to support here with our Calsil silicones: our own range of high quality defoamers. 

Improving beer quality with Calsil defoamers

One way brewers accomplish stabilisation and improvement of beer quality is by using process aids. Process aids are usually either a piece of equipment or an additive, for example to enhance taste or prolong shelf-life time. At Caldic, we developed a range of silicone defoamers under our own Calsil FGA brand. 

Antifoam? Won’t that affect the beer’s head retention?

Perhaps the most difficult impediment of using antifoam in the brewery is that at first glance it appears to be counter-intuitive. Putting something in wort or fermenting beer to control foam would seem to kill the head of foam of the finished product. However, when properly applied, a defoamer can have quite the opposite effect. 

Defoamer Application in different parts of the Beer Brewing Process

Yeast Propagation

Yeast requires a lot of air and agitation to grow in starter cultures and in the propagator, so antifoam is helpful to reduce the amount of foam. 

Kettle

Many brewers have a cold-water spray for the +/- 60 minutes boil to knock down the foam that rises up at varying intervals during the boil in order the avoid the loss of hops  The use of anti-foams in this stage of the process will reduce this loss.

Fermenter

In order to prevent overflowing of brewing kettles, breweries need to leave sufficient headspace in the vessel.  The use of antifoam during the fermentation process will reduce the amount of head space and increase the brewing capacity without the need for investment in additional fermentation capacity.

Spent Yeast disposal

In the bigger breweries, the spent yeast has to be disposed.  The breweries valorise this waste by selling this in the feed industry. Spent yeast tends to foam a lot during storage and transport. Silicone-based defoamers are ideal to control this. 

Are you interested in optimizing your beer brewing process but don’t know where to start? Together we can find the right solution for your process. For more information, contact Tom De Bondt via TDB@caldic.be or +32 (0)3 870 4867.