Accurate Batching

Heavy Seas craft brewery does not want to waste a sip of its high-quality beer on inaccurate weighing. With the help of a new batching system, the Maryland-based brewery now saves about a ton of materials every two weeks.

The company, founded in 1995, has been growing rapidly. What began as a small regional brewery is now selling beer in 18 states. The brewer of specialty beers creates about 40,000 barrels of craft beer annually using the finest ingredients. Those ingredients are expensive, and for Heavy Seas, wasted ingredients mean less profit.

To make Heavy Seas’ supreme brews, all ingredients must be precisely measured. “We were operating with another brand of old load cells, which were not giving us the degree of accuracy required for our high-end beers,” said Director of Brewing Operations Joe Marunowski. “Our batch weights varied and we had a lot of lost opportunity in the brewhouse.”

With less sophisticated batching systems, brewers bear the burden of manually measuring and monitoring all inputs. That increases the opportunity for errors and takes time away from tank preparation tasks.

Heavy Seas purchased the IND560 with Ringmount weigh modules from METTLER TOLEDO to improve weighing performance while alleviating some of the monitoring burden on the brewing staff. The new system allows the brewers to use the Target Table to save different targets and load the target they need. This ensures that the right amount of grain is used for the recipe. It shuts itself off when the correct amount has been allocated. “We have also reduced the amount of usage variance with a much higher degree of accuracy, thanks to the METTLER TOLEDO load cells,” said Marunowski.

While brewers previously had to manually control ingredient amounts, the new METTLER TOLEDO system only requires brewers to enter the target value. The system takes care of the rest. With exceptional accuracy, batch variability is eliminated, ensuring a high-quality brew in every batch.

Heavy Seas enjoys the versatility of the IND560. With the ability to connect directly to PLCs, LANs, WANs, and PC communication interfaces, the brewery has options when it comes to connectivity. Fast, precise, and repeatable results are guaranteed in manual, semi-automatic, or fully automatic processes. The IND560 is suitable for the harsh wash-down conditions required in food and beverage applications. Heavy Seas chose a METTLER TOLEDO batching system due to its reputation for quality. “I’ve used METTLER TOLEDO products throughout my career in the food and beverage industry, and I feel that the quality of engineering, service support, and price point make METTLER TOLEDO the obvious choice for this system,” said Marunowski.