The ABT Difference
The ABT difference starts with our people. Our technical staff are some of the most experienced and respected veterans of the microbrewing and specialty brewing revolution. No other brewery supplier in North America can match our depth and breadth of real-life brewing experience. ABT breweries are designed by brewers, for brewers.At ABT, we are driven by the knowledge that if we ever stop listening to our customers and fail to learn from experience, we're no better than the competition. We're constantly refining and rethinking our brewing equipment. Our goal is to make them better: more efficient, more advanced, more user-friendly.
Many ABT customers are experienced brewers who have chosen ABT because of superior design, engineering, and fabrication features. Others are entrepreneurs new to brewing, but with a strong desire to be part of a dynamic industry. Through our strong service, support, and training programs, ABT has helped many new brewers achieve both brewing and financial success.
ABT SYSTEM FEATURES
The following features are common to all of our brewing systems. Options and specific features of the various system levels are listed separately. - General
- All ABT brewing systems are designed for maximum practical efficiency. We take great care in working with our clients to provide an attractive and functional layout in the brewery.
- Internal finish quality of brewing vessels and pipework are critical for good sanitation and high-quality beer. Look inside and compare.
- Exterior finish and overall design are especially important in a brewpub, where the equipment is constantly on public display. You will find no sloppy, spattered MIG welds or rough, splotchy surfaces on a ABT vessel. Clean exterior surfaces and graceful design will inspire confidence in your pub customers.
- All ABT brewing, fermenting, and storage vessels have built-in CIP (clean-in-place) devices for quick, easy, and trouble-free cleaning and sanitizing.
- Brewing Water Supply
- An activated-carbon water filter removes chlorine and other off-flavors from your water supply, helping to assure better product quality and consistency.
- ABT's brewing liquor tanks are designed to give maximum efficiency. Our hot liquor tanks hold the full amount of hot water returned from the heat exchanger, saving water, energy, and hassle. All ABT systems come equipped with a flowmeter and in-line thermometer to permit precise control of mash-in and sparge liquor temperatures and flow rates.
- Mashing and Wort Production
- Our mash tuns are designed to give maximum wort extraction efficiency and quality, by a combination of optimizing the grain bed depth and proper design and sizing of the slots in the false bottom.
- The false bottom itself is constructed from sturdy, heavy-gauge wedge-wire material that stands up to many years of heavy use. The top surface is mirror-polished for easy cleaning. The plates can be easily lifted and supported by our special hook-and-hold tool, making cleaning under the false bottom a snap. The plates are custom fitted to the mash tun, eliminating the need for awkward gaskets, bolts, or locating tabs.
- ABT's acclaimed grist hydrator or "pre-masher" thoroughly intermixes the crushed malt with hot liquor during mash-in, eliminating not only much laborious hand mixing, but ensuring that there are no clumps or dry pockets to interfere with lautering efficiency. It needs no electrical power and has no moving parts. For sparging, the grist hydrator is replaced by a unique sparging nozzle, which delivers the sparge liquor as a fine, even, gentle spray--again, with no moving parts.
- Professional brewers know that clean wort makes clean beer. All ABT mash tuns and lauter tuns are equipped with a "vorlauf" device for recirculating the wort before lautering, producing clean, clear, consistently particle-free wort that exceeds big-brewery standards and aids in the production of high-quality beer.
- Control of hydrostatic pressure across the mash bed is essential for smooth, consistent, trouble-free wort runoff. Our pipe-grant system eliminates air pickup during lautering and requires no level sensors or other complex electrical controls. Its special inverted "U" tube, hydrostatic column, and valving give instant visual control of the flow conditions in the mash tun, eliminating stuck mashes. A sight glass allows inspection of wort clarity, and the ABT pipe grant now incorporates a sample cock for easy monitoring of wort gravity during runoff.
- Wort Boiling and Cooling
- Among the many outstanding design features of the ABT brewkettle is its large capacity, permitting the entire amount of liquor required for the brew to be heated at once. The positioning of the side tangential whirlpool inlet has been fine-tuned to provide the correct rotation speed for whirlpooling, ensuring complete mechanical separation of trub and hop solids and a compact trub pile in the center of the sloped kettle bottom. The bottom slope is calculated to facilitate complete drainage without the trub pile shifting or spreading, allowing better removal of clean wort and reducing wort loss.
- Several heating options are available. The most popular is our state-of-the-art direct gas fired system. Careful design of the forced-air burner, firebox, and control system gives our system a level of efficiency that no other can match. The burner nozzle is tangentially mounted to distribute the heat effectively, while the stack outlet is placed lower than the burner to reduce stack gas temperatures and keep the heat in the firebox where it belongs. A stainless flue damper ensures correct firebox pressure even when a power venting system is used. Strategic use is made of ceramic insulation to prolong the life of critical areas. There are no side extensions of the firebox; these only slow down the brewing process, since they have to be covered by wort before heating can start.
- ABT burner controls feature full-range control of burner output by means of a simple dial on the control panel. The burner control system uses a Honeywell flame control to ensure safe operation, a guaranteed low-fire start system, a modulator-controlled gas valve, and primary and pilot regulators. The entire unit is pre-assembled and bench tested before shipment. The BTU/hr range is preset to avoid dangerous overfire conditions.
- ABT's brewhouse control panels feature a handsome waterproof stainless-steel housing, NEMA 4X rated and UL listed. Panel controls have digital LED readouts and are waterproof. Run lights indicate when pumps and burner are in operation. A digital temperature control for the kettle and an internal timer allow hot liquor to be ready in the morning for no-delay brewing, at the precise temperature required. Panels come complete with internal wiring harnesses, transformer, fuses, and connector board. An easy-to-follow electrical schematic is included for field installation, and a complete schematic is available.
- ABT supplied heat exchangers are designed to cool the wort from 210 F. to 5 F. above the cooling water temperature, and to cool the entire batch within 30 minutes. High-efficiency design based on computer analysis permits return water temperatures as high as 173 F.
- All ABT systems feature in-line wort aeration for correct and consistent yeast growth in the fermenter. The wort aerator is made of durable sintered stainless steel, and includes a sight glass for observation of the aerated wort. An air filter is included to ensure that air or oxygen is oil-free.
- Fermentation, Cellar Equipment, and Bright Beer
- ABT builds its unitank fermenting and aging vessels with a 60 degree included cone angle for excellent yeast settling and clean draw-off, without the rat-hole formation that occurs with shallower cone angles. Unitanks of 20 barrels and over have a separate cooling jacket on the cone. We use only industry-preferred dimpled cooling jackets, which have more efficient cooling capability as well as being stronger and able to take higher pressures than other types of jacket.
- Each tank is equipped with a highly reliable, stainless steel vacuum/pressure safety device that gives trouble free operation in almost any situation and prevents over-pressurization or vacuum collapse of the tank. Other features include a Perlick sanitary sample cock, quick-disconnect gas fitting, a sealed pressure gauge, and a fitting for a blowoff hose for fermentation gas. We use high-quality inswing/outswing manways with sanitary, easily cleaned gaskets.
- Interior and exterior welds are fine, polished TIG welds rather than bulky, messy MIG wire-fed welds. Internal finish is to a uniformly high sanitary standard with outstanding properties for cleaning and sanitizing. External cladding is #4 finish, for sharp clean looks and easy cleaning.
- ABT serving tanks are built to the same high standard as our unitanks, with the addition of a sintered stainless carbonating element for touch-up carbonation and a liquid level gauge, permanently connected to the CIP system so that it is self-cleaning and self-sanitizing.
- Cart-mounted portable pumps include an Allen-Bradley motor starter and overload protection in a Nema 4 housing.
- ABT's cellar equipment includes clear, food-grade reinforced PVC transfer hose specifically designed for suction as well as discharge duty. This allows clear indication of when the hose is flooded or when the supply tank is exhausted, especially important during filtration. Our high-temperature brewer's hose is of the highest quality, solid and durable, and will give many years of service. Our hose-end adapters are of the long-shank, machined barb type, which prevents leakage and dangerous hose-end bursting.
- We offer the option of either sheet or D.E. filtration. Novice brewers will appreciate the simplicity and convenience of sheet filtration, while experienced brewers often prefer the high loading capacity and more economical operation of D.E. filters.
ABT: 7-15bbl. Brew System
