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Bell's Brewery picks Siemens to improve fermentation control

11/01/2007

ATLANTA  – Bell's Brewery, Galesburg, Mich., has installed the Braumat Compact brewery control system from Siemens Energy & Automation. The process control system maintains tight temperature control on Bell's 45 fermentation tanks.

Siemens Braumat Compact is a new brewery control system that enables small and mid-sized brewers to cost-effectively use the proven Braumat package, originally designed for high-volume applications, by combining it with the automation technology platform of SIMATIC PCS 7 Box.

"We have considerably reduced our labor hours, while increasing efficiency and eliminating variability and repetition with the new system,” says John Mallett, production manager at Bell's. "On our old manual system we had two or three people doing manual checks and logging information every day. Now, this is all controlled from one central location and can be done in a fraction of the time, which frees us up to do other activities in the brewery.”

The Braumat library is pre-integrated into the system and provides all the functions needed for automation, monitoring and control, and engineering of a brewery. The fully scalable Braumat Compact may be integrated into existing PCS 7 environments.

"The Braumat Compact system gives craft brewers a look and feel similar to a full- scale brewery while maintaining the 'craft' experience,” says Ed Montgomery, Siemens brewing industry manager. "Bell's had heard of Braumat, but always thought that it was only for the big breweries. We proved to them that the Braumat Compact was cost effective for the small brewer.”