Steering the way - Miller Brewing Co - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Miller's new pilot plant comes on line.

The Miller Brewing Company has announced the completion of a new $4 million state-of-the-art brewery and packaging facility within its Miller technical center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

"Miller is the first major brewery in the U.S. to put this type of sizeable investment into enhancing and accelerating its development of new products," said Dr. David Ryder, vice president of brewing, research and quality control at Miller.

Ryder said the new Miller Valley Brewery will be used to continually develop, brew and test new products in smaller batches. Until now, Miller periodically interrupted production at larger breweries to run test batches of new products, slowing production of core brands.

In the past Miller used two pilot systems, one of them a 1/3rd barrel and the other a 2/3rd barrel. "They were mirror images of each other, and we kept them in sync," says Mary DiMaggio, Miller Valley pilot brewing manager. "We will still use that system, because it is great for research, for example when we are evaluating a specific material, but the systems are way too small for consumer product testing."

According to DiMaggio, the new pilot brewery is equipped to brew and package up to ten barrels of beer or other malt-based beverages in each brew-run. "We'll brew on a small scale here," she says. "but this brewery designed to replicate our large breweries in every respect. We are a research facility, and we'll probably run an average of two or three brews a week."

The Miller Valley brewhouse was fabricated by Huppman in Germany. The ten-barrel brewing system includes a mashing tun, lauter tun, kettle and whirlpool. "Huppman had never made a 10-barrel brewhouse before," said Mary DiMaggio. Overall the brewhouse was designed with similarities to equipment in Miller's larger breweries.

The fermentation/maturation cellar is equipped with 10-barrel unitanks designed and constructed by Mueller. "Some of the unitanks have split jackets so we can do spilt fermentation," Mary DiMaggio says. "We can create a wart and then try different things, while evaluating the fermentation profile. The multiple jackets allow us to control cooling, and give us a lot of process flexibility."

The cellar also features yeast breaks, deaerated water tanks and package release tanks. Piping in the cellar was designed to accommodate the installation of new equipment at any point in the process.

Everything produced at Miller Valley is held and packaged on-site. The highly-automated packaging line was installed by Prospero Equipment. It includes a 12-spout inverted rinser, 12-valve counter-pressure filling heads, double pre-evacuation of [CO.sub.2], a tunnel pasteurizer and a caser/uncaser. It can run at rates of 10-50 bottles per minute.

"We are only doing bottles at this time," Mary DiMaggio says, "although we can also put product in kegs. We may add automated add canning and kegging capability in the near future."

DiMaggio says the brewery is a pleasure to run. "We make fantastic beer here," she says. "This brewery will allow us to accelerate development of new products, and cut down lead-time on new brands. In the long run we'll be able to get more new products to the market. We can do development work prior to rolling out. We can make beer using novel or traditional methods, whatever suits the needs of our customers. We can do it all."

A special Edel Helles lager was brewed and packaged to commemorate the grand opening of the pilot brewery. Dr. Ryder said that the beer was modeled after the type of lager beer that Miller Brewing founder Frederick Miller might have made during his early brewing career in Germany in the 1850s.

"This Edel Helles derives part of its character from European Budvar malt, a traditional under-modified malt," Ryder sald. "The rich, malty character provides an ideal background for the hop flavor and aroma derived from a combination of three noble hops-Tetttnanger, Hallertauer Mittelfruh and Saaz. It is true to the helles style in every detail."

Since the Edel Helles, the Miller Valley brewery has produced several additional new products. "We have created some new beers for people in our tour center to try," DiMaggio says, "and we've sent some things over to our tasting center. Right now we're evaluating some new beers, and we have some exciting things planned. We'll continue to look for innovative ways to make beer that delights our customers."

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