Tag Archives: factory

65,600,000 Bottles of beer on the wall

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Bottles of beer
Do you remember that song?

"99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer.
Take one down and pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall....

The cellars at SAB in Newlands are capable of holding over 21 million litres of beer (about 65 million bottles) at any given time! I'm guessing that the writer of that song sure was lucky not to have been standing in front of this conveyor belt!

I've been posting photos with the word yeast in them over the past two days. An interesting thing that I learned while on the tour was that SAB add on average 3 tons of yeast to each fermentation tank and that six day's later they remove three times as much - that's 9 tons of yeast! Isn't that just crazy!? Don't you wish that your bank could do the same with your money? :)

I think this was the last bit of useful information that I remember from the tour. At this point in the factory I (for some strange reason) become so thirsty that all I could think about was the beer tasting at the end. But, hold on there, allow me to keep this short and tell you more about that tomorrow!

Yeast pitching agitator?

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Pitching the yeast
One of our readers correctly pointed out that yesterday's photo must have been taken at South African Breweries in Newlands. SAB produce many different beers and other alcoholic beverages in their seven breweries located in six provinces across the country, including Carling Black Label - the first beer I remember taking a liking to!

After visiting the main control room at SAB we headed down to a huge room with a maize of impeccably clean stainless steel pipes that seemed to head in every which way. While the rest of my group was lectured on the process followed in this room, I took the opportunity to capture a few pictures that I'll be sharing with you. This brings me to today's photo - a series of important-looking red buttons that appear to control something called a Yeast Pitching Agitator.

I know precious little about brewing beer (yes, perhaps I should have paid closer attention) but from the little bit of reading that I did it seems as though "pitching the yeast" refers to the process of adding the yeast to the raw and bubble-less beer (known as "wort"). As for the agitator - it appears as though its role in the process is to activate the yeast in the wort by means of physically stirring the mixture.

Do you know how agitators in breweries work? If you do, please leave a comment to explain it more completely! :)

Don’t worry mum, it’s only a little yeast

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Yeast in a pipe
Yeast is one of those ultra-important additives to many of the yummy foodstuffs that we enjoy. An interesting fact is that archaeologist's discoveries in Egypt have proved that the use of this fungus in the baking process goes back thousands of years. I wonder who discovered that mixing this particular fungus with dough would cause the bread to rise. Isn't that just an odd thing to try doing?

During my last couple of day's of vacation (of which today is the last) I took a tour of a certain establishment. Based on this photo where in the world do you think I found myself?