Starting a brewery? Here’s what you need to know about gas.

The brewery industry has significantly grown in recent years, and evidence of this is the rise of many small, independent breweries in the U.S., U.K., and other beer-loving countries. There’s also been a growing trend in craft beers. These are beers brewed using high-quality ingredients and traditional, non-mechanized methods in small batches to serve local communities and pubs.

The craft brewery scene continues to grow, and more individuals are joining the rage as craft beer enthusiasts and entrepreneurs. If you plan on having your own independent brewery business, it is not enough to simply have a passion for the craft and the funding to get things started. It is also essential to understand what goes in from production to packaging and every step in between.

Crucial to this is knowing the right gases to use and for what purposes.

The objective is to produce high-quality craft beers and maximize resources in the best way possible. Even if you start as a hobbyist, being equipped with the right ingredients, materials, and grasp of the process can help you turn your pastime into mastery.

nexAir sees the industry’s unique needs and provides the technical knowledge, what we call KnowHow, to help make beer crafting a burgeoning business.

The Traditional Process

Craft beers are produced with their own distinct taste and aroma using carefully handpicked ingredients, but the process is generally the same. The brewing uses water, yeast, hops, and a sugar source, usually malt, and takes place in phases: Boiling the water to create wort, adding hops towards the end of boiling, moving the wort to the fermenter where yeast is added and allowed to settle. These steps may vary a bit depending on the desired craft beer flavor profile.

Gases Used in Brewing

Three gases are used in breweries: Carbon Dioxide, Oxygen, and Nitrogen. Let’s closely examine each gas’s role in the brewing process.

Oxygen

Oxygen is vital in preparing the yeast for optimum use in fermentation; it is added to help yeast grow and reproduce. Not having the right amount of oxygen can affect the beer’s taste and texture. This process is called aeration.

Aeration uses a mass flow controller to add the right amount of oxygen to the brewing vessel.

Carbon Dioxide

This gas has various uses in brewing, including blanketing or oxygen removal to protect the product from oxidation, carbonation, pressure transfer technique, cleaning containers, and dispensing the beer from keg to glass.

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is also used to prevent oxidation in pressurized containers and in nitrogenating beer. It usually comes in liquid form.

Forge Forward with nexAir

Because the quality and amount of gas used in beer brewing can affect quality, shelf life, and packaging, having the right supplier and technical KnowHow support is essential in having a brewery business.

nexAir is known as a reliable supplier of high-purity, industry-grade gases, with a team of professionals at every point who love to share their knowledge with clients and end users. We provide just the kind of products, service, and after-sales assistance needed to help you Forge Forward and develop your signature craft beer that’s a taste above the rest.