Arlington bottom up fill helps reduce DO pickup

With small pack beer products with long shelf lives now being consumed in unprecedented quantities, ever closer control of the brewing process to achieve a consistent and long-lasting product is increasingly important. One factor of particular importance to consistency and longevity is the ever-present question of how much dissolved oxygen is present in the final product.

The post fermentation transfer of ales between processes is demonstrably one of the biggest contributors of DO in the finished product. That is to say that every time product is moved from one vessel to another it will inevitably incur a DO overhead on the way. The causes and magnitude of that overhead will be due to a combination of environmental, process and equipment factors where the smallest of changes can represent amplified improvements in the end result. The need for smaller brewers to catchup with the larger producers is essential if they are to continue to win space on supermarket shelves. With market share up for grabs the need to innovate low cost and effective solutions is clear.

Transit packaging specialist Arlington Packaging is one company that has been working closely with brewing and bottling/canning customers to identify and improve its offering in this area. Because DO depends to a large extent on direct contact with the air, the more air that can be excluded from the different process steps the better, so the latest in its line-up of products, the catchily-named ‘bottom fill bleed valve’, allows Arlington’s bag-in-box transit tanks to be filled completely air-free via the bottom valved port of the liner.

Picture courtesy of Stroud Brewery.

Arlington claims the combination of the bleed valve with the bottom fill process not only helps to reduce oxygen pick-up during transfer by allowing air to be removed from pipework and coupled joints, but also the bottom up fill method provides the ability to keep a closer control over turbulence within the fill process and the DO pickup that can produce. Any gas that is released from solution during this transfer process can be released from the top of the liner.

Commented Michal Parczewski from South East Bottling, who now routinely sees customers using the bottom fill process with the bleed valve, “We would now advise our customers to use this system, in particular the bleed valve, as in our experience we have seen reliable reductions in DO of several hundred ppb. This is proving to be a gamechanger in achieving the levels we require from our customers and consequently the quality of the finished product.”

For further information: www.arlingtonpackaging.com