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The technology behind Ibhayi Brewery:
SAB's latest and arguably most advanced in the world
Based on an Interview with Donovan Sparks, Technical Brewer
Africa, the origin of humankind, has a long history of brewing. Brewing Science has at some point influenced much of the technology on which we rely today. South African Breweries
(SAB), as the world's fourth largest brewing company has employed an admirable blend of traditional brewing skills with modern technological advances to produce products, which are of high quality and consistency. The Ibhayi brewery,
based in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, as SAB's latest brewery, and also the most advanced brewery in the world deserved a visit.
We asked Donovan Sparks, a Technical Brewer at this brewery to answer some technological questions.
What is the output of the new Ibhayi Brewery?
It is about 50000 hl a week at full capacity.
Donovan, I have read that a typical brewery consumes in the region of 10 litres of water per litre of beer produced. What is the water consumption per litre of beer at this brewery?
Approximately 4.5:1
What allows this favourable ratio?
We have spent considerable time in optimising the water treatment plant in terms of throughput between vessel regenerations. This is critical as large volumes of water are used to regenerate the various vessels
(for example, sand and carbon filters). In addition to this, in the packaging hall for example, water is recirculated between the different compartments of the bottle washer, and also at the pasteurizer. Water saving/optimisation strategies are a feature at all SAB plants due
to the "double" cost of this raw material (incoming water as well as discharge costs to drain as effluent).
What major technological advances are incorporated into the Ibhayi brewery?
One of the major differences at Ibhayi compared to the rest of SAB breweries is the complexity of the water treatment plant. The requirement for such a plant is two fold, firstly the world trend is the use of a consistent water supply to allow the production of consistent beers, and secondly, the incoming water quality at Ibhayi is very poor in terms of brewing requirements.
Which water is used for the brewing?
Our main water source is from the Orange River. Loerie water is used as a back-up when the municipality is performing maintenance on their pipelines.
Do you have to purify the water in any way? For example, dechlorination,
deionisation, etc.
We produce 3 water streams at Ibhayi, namely: process, dilution and service water. All 3 streams are purified. All three streams pass through a set of sand filters
(which removes suspended solids, iron and manganese via filtration - the latter 2 are removed as the ionic iron
while manganese is oxidized to insoluble precipitates via air dosing) and carbon filters
(which remove trihalomethanes and chlorine via adsorption). Process and dilution water then passes through a set of cation exchangers
(which removes cations in a 2-step process) and anion exchangers (which removes anions), whereas only a portion of service water passes through these 2 ion-exchangers. Service water splits off before the blending station
(after the anion exchanger), passes through an intensive aerator which removes carbon dioxide, and the two streams
(after anion exchanger and after carbon filter) are then mixed via a conductivity set point to fix the chloride and hardness values. At the blending station, process and dilution water is dosed with pure lime, as all good Brewing water contains a small amount of calcium. At this stage process water is fed to reservoir, dilution water passes through another set of carbon filters to reduce the THM level further prior to being delivered to
its reservoir. In summary, totally purified water is used in the beer making process.
What is this brewery worth to Port Elizabeth as a whole?
This is difficult to answer. The Brewery cost in excess of R700 million, with a certain portion of this given to local companies. It is much improved in terms of efficiency, environmental friendliness and quality due to significant improvements in technology, skills and qualifications of staff and internationally recognized systems (ISO 9001, ISO 14000 and HACCP).
The new brewery has an advanced computerised control system -could you tell us more about it?
The brewery is fully automated, allowing control of all equipment (instruments, pumps, valves, vessels) used to brew beer. In other words, no manual intervention is required to transfer beer from one point to another. The plant is controlled by a batch system, which allows the operators to run recipes,
consisting of sequences of operations to be performed. These recipes control the execution of
the brewing schedule. The operator can control when they start and influences execution by changing parameters. All the
information obtained from these batches are recorded for reporting purposes.
This useful information can be used by Brewmasters for continuous improvement.
Specialist technicians are responsible for maintaining and modifying these recipes and have greater freedom in controlling the plant.
All in-line measurement devices are linked via networks to a real-time data logging. This is used for trouble shooting, fault finding and optimising by examining the data historically.
Which SAB products are produced at the plant?
Castle lager, Carling black label, Hansa Pilsner, Castle Milk stout and Lion Lager.
Where are the major ingredients sourced?
Malt - Caledon malting's and imports (N America, Europe).
Hops - George and Europe (e.g. Saaz Hops from the Czech Republic)
Water - Local municipality
In terms of its level of technological advancement, how does this brewery compare to the other SAB facilities?
It is the newest and most advanced of all SAB facilities. In fact, it can be true to say that Ibhayi Brewery currently is the most technologically advanced in the world - very proud of that.
Can consumers expect any flavour improvements with the new facility?
Consumers can expect flavour consistency rather than flavour improvements. SAB beers have won numerous and recent International beer awards, so our beers are of the highest quality already.
In terms of process, what is the average time that it takes to complete the primary fermentation before the more important laagering phase?
12 days for the fermentation process and thereafter a minimum of 6-8 days maturation ALL year round.
What is your final filtration system?
A Candle filter filtration system is used.
How much carbon dioxide does the plant produce, and is this used in any way?
About 3.5 kg/hl of beer. The purified carbon dioxide is re-used in subsequent
brews and buyers are being sought to buy the excess.
How much waste yeast does the plant produce? Where does this go?
The yeast volume increases three-fold during fermentation. The yeast is re-used in subsequent brews. Excess yeast is sold and used in the manufacture of marmite, vegemite, or simply as a supplement in animal feed.
Are there any other things that you would like our readers to know about the plant?
- This Brewery has attracted international interest and we have had many visitors already from around the world including Brewing groups
- About 5000 cows can be fed per day with the amount of spent grains generated by the brewery.
- The brewery uses about 48 medium sized swimming pools of water per day.
- The Electrode Boiler used for steam production - 22Mwatt (35tons/hr) output that is equivalent to the energy consumption of a small town like Jeffreys Bay.
- With one Maturation vessel in your back yard, you would be able to drink 6 quarts per day for 176 years.
- As quality control is concerned, 635 QC Analyses are performed /day, and there are a total of 369 different types of analyses that can be performed
- 125,000 tiles used to tile the packaging floor
- It would take this brewery just 40 days to produce one beer for every person in SA.
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