Here’s how a tasty beer is born, from the selection of the ingredients to the beer bottling system

Beer is a preferred beverage among young people. It’s the undisputed protagonist at summer parties, football games, and dinners among friends… and is certainly an ideal partner when it comes to having fun.

But how many regular consumers really know how good beer is made?

Many may not know it, but before it arrives inside the refrigerators of people around the world, this popular alcoholic beverage has its ingredients carefully selected and subsequently undergoes a series of sophisticated operations performed by high-tech beer bottling machines.

When performed properly, these steps contribute to the creation of an extremely high quality product.

The importance of beer bottling machines

Depending on the number of bottles that each brewery needs to fill every day and the amount of money it wants to invest in machinery, a brewery can choose from among various types of bottle filling machines.

For example, a bottle can be filled with tools requiring entirely manual interventions on the part of the brewer, or else can be filled using a high-performance automatic bottle filling system.

The first system, which is highly recommended for bottling in small quantities, is also the least expensive bottle filling system. These types of systems are easy to install, are perfectly suitable for filling, capping and labelling glass bottles, and are therefore the perfect choice for those who produce just a few dozen bottles a day.

If you frequent pubs and microbreweries that produce craft beers, then you will have likely enjoyed a beer bottled using this type of system in the past.

The second type of beer bottling system is the automatic kind.

For example, if you drink beers that are widely available on the market, the product that you purchase is most likely bottled by an automatic system designed for high production volumes. Divided into three categories, there are beer bottling systems for volumes of up to 4,000 bottles per hour, systems for 4,000 to 12,000 bottles per hour and machines for producing over 12,000 bottles per hour.

A glance at the bottles

When it comes to beer bottling machines, it’s important to take into account the quality of the bottles themselves. Most beers are sold in bottles or cans. Today we’ll only take the former into consideration.

You will have likely noticed that the glass used for bottles is often dark. This dark glass, in fact, helps to protect the beer organoleptic properties and reduce the potential risks associated with direct sunlight exposure.

Silica sand, soda and cullet are blended with small amounts of iron and other chemical dyes in order to give the glass bottles a darker colour.

This blend of ingredients is subsequently placed in special high temperature kilns and cast into the moulds used to form the bottles.

The quality of a good beer depends upon the selection of its ingredients

As previously stated, beer consists of a combination of ingredients.

Its quality, in fact, does not depend on the type of bottle or the type of beer filling system used for bottling.

Based on the various types and varieties, the selection of the right ingredients is indeed essential to ensuring a good final result.

Barley malt, grains, hops, yeast and water: the ingredients must always be carefully selected and blended.

Today, in fact, both small and large breweries typically have hundreds of beer varieties and recipes. These include historical beer production recipes dating back to the centuries before Christ, as well as more recent alternative recipes, like chilli pepper and pineapple beer. The secret, however, has always been the same: technique, passion and excellent ingredients.