Aldersbach attracts brewers from all over the world

Aldersbach in the eastern part of Bavaria has a great deal to offer: the baroque Asam church is particularly well-known. Up to now the local brewery with its beers of the highest quality was best known to branch insiders. However since January of this year Aldersbach and its brewery are also well-known among international brewers.

Brewery technologists from all over the world met at the Weihenstephan science centre for food, land use and the environment for the 2006 technological centre which was chaired by Professor Back. Contributions on the subject of raw materials and the important technological aspects of beer production were presented under the central theme "technology and analytics". Almost 400 brewers, all of them participants at the Weihenstephan conference, made use of the excursion to the Aldersbach Brewery which was offered during the conference in order to find out about the brewery and in particular the new bottling hall.

The Krones company installed a new filling line there for 28,000 bph in the middle of 2005. At the same time the brewery decided on a new empty bottle inspector from the HEUFT company for the empty bottle inspection section: a HEUFT InLine BFS2 TI36 with the latest image processing software, the HEUFT reflexx.

10 years of experience with a HEUFT SPECTRUM BFS from the first generation of linear inspectors was the crucial factor in the brewery´s decision. The brewery team and Mr Wagner the head brewer did not want to do without this reliability.

The conveyor control system in the new filling line of the Aldersbach brewery is also exemplary and points the way ahead: a HEUFT synchron TX controls the speed of the individual drive units from the outfeed of the washing machine to the infeed of the labelling machine providing an optimum bottle flow in the infeed and outfeed section of the inspector and the infeed of the filler. The perfectly functioning corner combiner before the EBI is impressive.

The solution regarding the buffer between the filler and the labeller which are electronically blocked is of particular interest. The single-lane conveyors utilise the bottle separation from the filler/closer in order to close these gaps gently when the labeller stops and in this way to accurately provide the additional room required for a complete filler circuit.

The conference participants were very taken with what they saw and with the explanations of Johannes Seidel, the HEUFT sales manager for Bavaria, who introduced the technology installed in a clear manner during the following panel discussion. Tankards with Aldersbach beer and a Bavarian snack then provided an informal end to an interesting excursion to Aldersbach.