Oxygen pick-up

Oxygen pick-up after beer fermentation is critical to the quality. How to minimize it?

 

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The oxygen pick-up is a basilar information for those producing non pasteurized and non filtered beers.

In fact, during all the processing and packaging steps, the assimilation of oxygen in the product compromises the quality and reduces its shelf life.

For this reason, microbreweries and craft breweries must apply all the necessary stratagems to reduce the oxygen pick-up, in order to prevent their product from oxidation and, consecutively, to keep high quality as long as possible.

First of all, it’s necessary to contact companies with a deep knowledge of beer: each product has in fact different characteristics from the others so, a really high specialization in the brewing sector, is fundamental for a company which produces plants for beer processing and packaging.

A generic experience in kegging and bottling industry is not a sufficient warranty as the beer is a product completely different from wines, soft drinks and other kind of beverages.

As the brew-masters know, even among the different types of beer there are important differences, significant for the packaging process.

Another fundamental aspect for the craft breweries, is to refer to companies with an adequate experience, able to help them to reduce the oxygen assimilation and able to solve all the other problems that may come up during the packaging stages.

The experience allows to develop an important know-how, a background of big and small advices that the manufacturer of bottle, keg and can lines can pass to the brewery during the installation of the plants, the staff training and the after sales assistance.

Comac has been working in the brewing industry for over twenty years and has gathered all the required experience and know-how necessary to suggest craft breweries the best solution in order to safeguard and guarantee the best product quality.

Thanks to these skills, Comac ensures lower levels of pick-up comparing to those required by the biggest breweries in the world. In fact, even if the usual required standards are between 100 and 150 ppb (parts per billion), Comac is able to ensure a pick-up of 50 ppb, for bottles, sometimes reduced to exceptional levels of 20 ppb: these remarkable results were obtained thanks to the synergies between Comac and its Customers.

However, this is not still enough. A final requirement, as important as the others, is the availability of adequate control tools for monitoring the oxygen pick-up. For Comac to affirm that its own machines and plants are able guarantee a low level of oxygen assimilation is not enough if there is not a precise control able to demonstrate the real data of oxygen pick-up.

Although these tools are expensive, a producer of bottling and kegging machines must offer its customers a certified and evincible warranty.

Comac is provided with these tools because the quality is the heart of the Company’s philosophy: the quality of our plants as well as the quality of our Customer’s products.

For any further information you may need, we will be very happy to answer to all your questions.