News –

NORD Delivers Drive Solutions for Intelligent Brewing

Cover story highlights how two breweries rely on NORD products to produce specialized brews

Waunakee, WI, 2019-10-11

The cover story in Power Transmission Engineering (September 2019) tells the tale of two breweries—one in Waunakee, WI and the other in Hamburg, Germany—and how both breweries rely on a variety of NORD gearmotors to optimize their operations.

<h2>Octopi Brewing – Waunakee, WI</h2>

Just down the road from NORD’s U.S. headquarters in Waunakee, WI sits the leading contract beverage facility in the Midwest: Octopi Brewing.

As the demand for craft beer continues to grow, there has been a shift for brewers to turn to contract breweries as a cost-effective option to help them break into the craft brewing market. Not only do contract breweries help reduce the cost of rent and eliminate the need to purchase pricey equipment for new craft breweries, there are also many advantages to having production closer to the places of demand.

Octopi is using NORD’s helical bevel gearmotors and the parallel shaft CLINCHER™ to turn the rakes in the Lauter Tun and rotate the agitator in the Mash Tun. Depending on the batch, Octopi will put anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 pounds of grain into the Mash Tun, and it is critical that the equipment operates flawlessly to ensure the timeliness and quality of the beer they are brewing.

“Of all the equipment we have, it’s the best. It’s reliable. It’s been able to handle everything we’ve thrown at it, and we’ve really pushed the limits,” says Isaac Showaki, president of Octopi Brewing. Read Octopi's case study.

<h2>Landgang Brewery – Hamburg, Germany</h2>

Dependable, low-maintenance brewery technology is the alpha and omega for consistently high beer quality and delivery reliability. Intelligent NORD drives significantly support the automation of the brewing process and manage the recipe diversity at the Landgang Brewery in Hamburg, Germany.

At Landgang, all ingredients are fully prepared and processed automatically. The brewhouse is equipped with decentralized, intelligent NORD drives for continuous, precise operation. Each drive retrieves the applicable motion sequences for the respective recipes and adjusts them to the current weight and volume of the ingredients. Read Landgang's case study.