Briggs of Burton’s Distilling team supported Beam Suntory in the complete design and installation of a new mashing plant at Cooley Distillery. Cooley Distillery features both pot and patent stills allowing them to produce both malt and grain whiskey including famous brands such as Kilbeggan, Tyrconnell, Connemara Peated Single Malt and Greenore Single Grain Irish whiskey.

Distillery Equipment

Briggs of Burton Distilling team designed and engineered:

• Dry Goods Handling system including Grist case and Pneumatic slide valve
• New Mashing Plant including Briggs Steeles masher,  4.5m diameter Full Lauter Tun, Draff chute and Wort/CIP pump, valves and in-line components
• Upgrade included new electrical and process control including electrical design, supply and installation
• MCC/Control panel and Instrumentation
• PLC/SCADA automation and control using existing WinCC SCADA and New S7 400 PLC with new remote I/O equipment
• Training and Software simulation

“We replaced their existing Mash Tun (4.9m, 5.80 Te charge, 14 h turnaround time) with new Briggs Distillery Lauter Tun (4.5m, 3.2 Te charge, 6 h turnaround time). The new smaller tun is quicker and more efficient, achieving >98% extract recovery.”

John Hancock, Briggs Technical Director

Briggs of Burton designed, built and installed a new full lauter tun as part of The Glenlivet’s Phase I expansion and capacity upgrade. The Glenlivet’s requirements for a new mashing plant were that it needed to achieve a high quality wort (clear) with a turnaround time.

The Glenlivet distillery is located in the Cairngorms National Park and  “remains the benchmark that all other Speyside single malts are measured against”. Water is drawn from Josie’s Well, a source of hard mineral water, that enables complex aromas to develop during the distillation process. In the still house lantern-shaped stills give the spirit its outstanding balance and strong character.

Distillery Equipment

• Briggs VSD controlled 500 mm Steeles Masher
• Briggs 9.5 m diameter Full Distillery Lauter tun capable of 12.1 Te Malt Charge and rapid batch turnaround time (TAT) at 3.3 hours
• Briggs Draff Dump tank and draff discharger.
• Wort run-off system with mass flow / gravity and haze meters.
• Wort cooling system
• In-line equipment and pipework
• Electrical and process control
• Mashing Plant Automation and Control on Rockwell ControLogix, integrated into existing RSView 32 SCADA, including grist and water feed, wort cooling and draff transfer

Distillery Engineering

• Process Design Calculations
• Equipment Sizing
• Process & Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs)
• Plant Utilisation Chart
• User Requirement Specification (URS)
• Functional Design Specification (FDS)
• Automation and Control
• Software Writing
• Installation and Commissioning

The Singleton of Glen Ord is made in the northern highlands from barley grown on the Black Isle and water from the White Burn. Increased demand from the Asia-Pacific region required a substantial increase in production from the 19th Century Glen Ord distillery.

Briggs of Burton worked with Diageo’s engineering team to support the establishment of a new mash house, tun room and still house with eight new pot stills. Briggs of Burton’s distilling team also introduced Thermal Vapour Recompression (TVR) and Energy Store systems to the new and existing still houses. The expansion project also included the associated utilities and services including the boiler house, control room and supporting process tanks all required upgrading.

Briggs of Burton helped Diageo double the overall production to approximately 10 million litres of spirit a year and in achieving ‘Best in Group’ on water and energy Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at the distillery.

Distilling Services

• Design and engineering to double plant capacity through complete new process stream
• Full upgrade of existing process stream
• Design, management and integration of New Dry Goods system, Mash house, Tun room and Still house
• Implementation of Briggs TVR System and Energy Storage System exporting to nearby Maltings
• Recognised as the most energy efficient malt distillery in Diageo group

Briggs TVR System

• Split condenser design for hot water recovery and flash vapour generation
• Copper clad flash vessel
• Externally heated stills with plate and frame heat exchanger
• Briggs Thermal Vapour Recompression (TVR) System linked to Energy Storage tanks

Briggs of Burton designed and built a 10 hectolitre (hl) research brewery for SABMiller for their new Bioenergy and Brewing Science Building. The building was opened in 2011 by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Nottingham, Professor David Greenaway and the Chief Executive Officer of SABMiller, Mr Graham MacKay.

The building was funded by a combination of industrial, European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), Government Funds and the University. The building houses the Briggs of Burton brewery, a micro-maltings facility, a smaller Briggs of Burton 35 L nano brewhouse, a fermentation suite, a food processing centre, a bioenergy suite and several state of the art laboratory suites.

Brewing Equipment

Complete pilot scale Brewery designed, engineered, and built by Briggs of Burton for SABMiller including:  

• Malt and Cereal Handling with 4-Roll Mill, Dust Filter, and 2 Mobile Grist Bins
• Briggs Cereal Cooker and Mash Vessel with controlled feed premashers and low shear mash agitation
• Briggs Lauter Tun, max charge 200 kg, featuring a density meter, and haze meter
• Briggs Kettle/Whirlpool with sugar weighing and auto additions, manual additions pot, CO₂ sparge, and trub handling
• Features Briggs of Burton Symphony External Wort Heater (EWH).
• Wort cooling using ambient water blending
• Wort oxygenation using air or oxygen
• Yeast propagation flask/air supply
• Yeast handling including 3 x 1 hl yeast vessels
• 2 x 5 hl, 2 x 10 hl, and 20 hl FVs with automated jacket control/temperature profile and top pressure control.
• Beer centrifuge
• Beer chiller, blending and carbonation skid
• 2 x 10 hl BBTs including rousers and automated jacket temperature control
• 3 Tank automated recovery CIP system; recovered rinse, caustic and final rinse with acid and sterilant dosing.
• Bottling line.
• Single use automated CIP system with caustic, acid and sterilant dosing
• CIP disposal effluent buffer system.
• De-Aerated Water (DAW) generation and UV steriliser
• Steam and condensate provided by 650 kg/hr, natural gas fired steam generator
• Cold and chilled water generated through 45 kW packaged propylene glycol chiller, refrigeration plant, and water treatment plant
• Process and instrument air, including sterile filtered air for wort aeration
• Siemens S7 PLC and WinCC SCADA control system

Brewing Engineering

• Process Design Calculations
• Equipment Sizing
• Process Flow Sheets
• Plant Utilisation Charts
• User Requirement Specification (URS)
• Functional Design Specification (FDS)
• Automation and Control
• Software Writing
• Installation and Commissioning

Everards of Leicestershire, is a local independent family business founded in 1849 who now own over 175 pubs across the Midlands. The iconic Tiger beer is the most well-known brand and is the Official Beer of many local sports teams. Briggs of Burton built Everards of Leicestershire’s previous 100 hl Brewhouse in the 1980s, based around the 2 Vessel Brewhouse concept.

Everards of Leicestershire are now leading the “Everards Meadows” project. This new development will be their new home with plans to relocate their brewery and offices alongside a new Beer Hall for the public. Briggs of Burton have been involved in the design and engineering of the new Brewery.

Brewing Engineering Services

• Completed an initial Feasibility study to support in the overall equipment sizing and brewery footprint
• Scope expanded to include the Detailed Design of the overall brewery including:
• Process Flow Diagrams (PFDs)
• Piping and instrumentation diagram (P&IDs)
• 3D Model
• Capacity planning including utility and effluent loading
• Plant configuration sizing including review and update of vessel data sheets
• Electrical load calculation
• Drainage layouts
• Control system

“We are delighted to be working with the Everards of Leicestershire project team on their new Brewery as part of the Everards Meadows development.”

Julian Bryant, Sales and Proposals Manager

Briggs of Burton offer a range of high integrity, reusable stainless steel drums. Briggs stainless steel drums are used by a number of industries for various applications. These include closed top stainless steel drums with 1.2 mm gauge all welded construction with UN Certification for the carriage of dangerous goods. Stainless steel drum sizes range from 10 to 200 litres. Briggs of Burton have UN Certification Group 1 on 100 and 200 litres sizes, and Group 2 on the 25 litre drum.

Typical 200 litre stainless steel closed top drum

Crevice-free construction with attractive and easy-clean design. Closed top drums can be modified to meet customer requirements. Typical construction of a 200 litre Briggs stainless steel drum includes:

• 3/4″ (75 mm) BSP and 2″ (50 mm) BSP drum flange with bung
• Chimb ring section
• Rolling ring section
• Optional: 3/4″ (75 mm) BSP and 2″ (50 mm) BSP side entry drum glange with bung
• Fully welded construction

Typical Applications

Briggs Stainless Steel closed top Drums are used by many trusted names to transport a wide range of products including:

• Liquids Nicotine for use in “e-liquids” including e-cigarettes (25 litres)
• Soft Drink Concentrate for shipping overseas (200 litres)
• Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs; 25 litres)
• Storing Low and intermediate level radioactive waste (LILRW) from nuclear generating stations (200 litres)

Briggs of Burton have worked with a major group of yeast and bakery ingredients companies operating in all parts of the world. The group of companies have a long established and successful history in the baking industry. The UK plant now produces fresh yeast products for the company’s markets in the UK and Ireland. The range of fresh liquid cream yeast and compressed block yeast is distributed to the Distillery and Bioethanol industries in addition to the Bakery industry.

Briggs of Burton have provided a cream yeast storage system designed to provide complete segregation of yeast strains.

Briggs Yeast Equipment

• Complete turn-key project
• Cream yeast storage vessels
• Tanker off loading system
• Local control panel

Briggs Engineering Services

• Process design calculations
• Mass and energy balance
• Equipment sizing
• Process flow sheets
• Plant utilisation charts
• Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&IDs)
• Equipment schedules
• User Requirement Specification (URS)
• Functional Design Specification (FDS)
• Complete mechanical and electrical design, installation and commissioning

Diageo’s ‘Project Forth’ has driven a host of improvements to procedures, operations and facilities at the Cameronbridge grain distillery in Scotland. Diageo’s mission was threefold: to deliver the project safely, to use ‘best available technology’ and leave a legacy of which all could be proud. The overall project spanned several years and is divided into four major but related projects with Briggs of Burton being heavily involved in Phases 2 and 3.

• Phase 2: upgrade fermentation and cleaning in place (CIP), all designed and managed by Briggs of Burton
• Phase 3: pre-distillation with all processing designed and built by Briggs of Burton

Briggs of Burton plc embarked on this project in 2007, fast-forward to today and after providing some 23 km of stainless steel pipe ranging in size 6 mm to 20-in, 4651 mainly valves and over 200 pumps, Diageo has achieved its originally specified mission statement. “Many of the changes made at Cameronbridge have seen adjustments, improvements or automation of traditional custom and practice procedures.”

Fermenting and Cleaning in Place (CIP)

• 16 wash backs each with 3600hl working capacity plus two 1300hl Yeast Optimisation Vessels (YOV)s all supplied out of The Netherlands by Holvrieka now part of Ziemann Holvrieka
• Dual Purpose Design to utilise Fermentation vessels as a temporary wash charger to maintain distillation supply throughout project life cycle
• The Wash is pumped to one of the four existing stills for processing into new grain spirit
• Spent wash from the stills is pumped to a new hydro-cyclone set where it is processed to produce clarified  spent wash which is stored and used for ‘backset’ within the continous mashing process.
• Three separate CIP sets housed within new purpose built building
• A three-tank mains recovery CIP set delivers a pre rinse cycle, a hot cycle and a final rinse cycle
• A four-tank vessel CIP set delivers a pre rinse cycle, a warm caustic or cold acid cycle and a final rinse cycle
• A single use CIP set is utilised for cleaning yeast systems

Pre-distillation

• Controlled ratio of cooked wheat and Low Temperature Process (LTP) wheat and transfer for fermentation
• New 200 Te silo that supplies wheat to either the existing pressure cookers or new LTP streams
• Enzymatic activity is provided by a malt slurry distribution system
• Direct steam heated cookers each with a nominal capacity of 16 Te of un-milled wheat. Cooked mash is discharged under pressure, flashed and quench cooled before being transferred into a mash tun.
• Design and installation of Briggs Distillery mash tuns, which both continuous and batch process mashing to generate wort
• Wort line yeast pitching using either cream or ‘optimised’ yeast
• Installation of modular multi-stage wort heat exchanger to utilise site cooling media
• Distillery cream yeast is imported onto the site via road tanker and stored in two new tanks supplied by Briggs of Burton