Situated in the famous beer region in northern France, in the Province of Artois near the Belgian border, there has been a brewery in the 330-people village of B?nifontaine for more than 90 years. This brewery has been successfully run by the Castelain family since 1966. The brewery is famous for its CH’TI lager, which won a gold medal at the Brussels Beer Challenge 2013 and a silver medal at the European Beer Star 2013 in Munich. Since the beginning of 2013, these award-winning beers have now been brewed in a brewhouse from GEA Brewery Systems.
GEA Brewery Systems was pleased to take on the task of creating a new brewhouse for such famous French beers. The Castelain Brewery set a tight time frame and a clearly defined task for the conceptual design of the plant. The main focus was not only on meeting the latest technological requirements, but also on covering the international demand in the long term with a flexible plant system, particularly as this demand is forecast to increase continuously.
To meet this goal, the GEA COMPACT-STAR
Flexible and versatile
This includes a 3-vessel brewhouse with a 5 t/h MILLSTAR
The MILLSTAR
The lauter tun with a diameter of 4 meters has a lautering surface of 12.5 m? with a free filter area of 14 % and includes important features of the LAUTERSTAR
The weak wort can be collected in an insulated tank and the warm weak wort can then be added to the MILLSTAR
Individual and efficient
The Whirlpool/wort kettle is equipped with a JETSTAR
Since the brewery produces both top-fermented and bottom-fermented beers, the cooling system is designed as a two-stage heat exchanger. The wort flows to the yeast dosing unit with the corresponding temperatures. With the GEA aeration units, the wort comes to the fermenting room with an oxygen content of up to 12 ppm.
Easy automation
As a specialist for process integration, GEA Brewery Systems integrated some existing process units of Castelain Brewery into the new brewhouse. Thus, the entire system was raised to a uniform technical level and the production process was optimized.
The GEARBOXX
Thanks to the intuitive operation, it was no problem to familiarize the production team as well as the laboratory staff and the management of Castelain Brewery with the GEARBOXX
Fit for the future
The expandable COMPACT-STAR
With the COMPACT-STAR