Hout Bay-based Urban Brewing Company, has become synonymous with good quality craft beers. The need for alternative drinking pleasure has been spawned from a glut of mainstream commercial beers, primarily lagers. Craft beers stand for variety, and this is where the art becomes important. When the proprietor, Peter Roeloffze, ventured into brewing, he realised that producing the best would mean firstly making use of a master brewer, and secondly, making the process repeatable to create a consistently good product.
With Pollock or van Gogh, their works of art came to life only when they had vision, passion and the correct tools in hand. The artist at Urban is brew master Jörg Finkeldey, of Brew Africa. Under the guidance of Roeloffze, Finkeldey was encouraged to consider the implementation of automation using a PLC, an HMI and VFDs to ensure a consistent and reliable product. This option looked like being a costly endeavour until the choice was narrowed down to LSIS for the process control.
The LSIS-XEC-SU PLC is the backbone of the system with XBF temperature and analog expansion cards calibrated to suit the process. The XP40-TTE 7” screen HMI, offering high definition process screens, was chosen as the canvas while the iG5A and iC5 VSDs took care of the system mixing and reticulation requirements.
Observing Finkeldey’s passion at work, one gets the sense that this is more than knowledge, know-how and automated controls, but rather a master crafting a fine work of art. His tools are barley and wheat, water, hops and yeast, kettles, mixers, pumps and related control systems. These operate like instruments in an orchestra, to craft multi award winning, ales and lagers.
With the installed components and degree of automation and control, Finkeldey can master his craft relying on precise and accurate parameters confirming indeed the science behind the art of an outstanding and unique brew. The result is happy clients.
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