First Key provides specialized and practical expertise to ensure your customers receive your best beer every time.

We provide complete system design, commissioning and operational readiness for the following areas:

Grains Handling and Milling

  • Pneumatic conveying
  • Screw conveyors
  • Bucket elevators
  • Dust collection
  • Explosion suppression
  • Grain silos
  • Scale hoppers
  • Malt mills
  • Hammer mills, including all instrumentation and controls.

Brewhouse

  • Mash mixer
  • Cereal cooker
  • Lauter tun
  • Mash filter
  • Brew receivers
  • Kettle
  • Whirlpool
  • Wort cooler
  • Hot and cold brewing liquor tanks
  • Trub handling
  • Spent grains handling
  • Kettle stack heat recovery systems
  • Wort stripping including all related pumps, piping systems, valves, instrumentation and controls
  • Complete steam & condensate piping systems design, including control valves, steam traps, vacuum breakers, air vents and condensate return systems.

Spent Grains Handling

  • Spent grains storage tanks
  • Dense phase conveying systems, (e.g. Pondorff)
  • Screw conveying systems
  • De-watering systems
  • Drying systems including all related piping and utility systems, instrumentation and controls.

Yeast Management and Propagation

  • Wort aeration/oxygenation facilities
  • Yeast storage tanks
  • Surplus yeast storage and truck loading facilities
  • Yeast propagation facilities
  • Yeast monitoring and injection facilities
  • C.I.P and sterile steam S.I.P facilities, including all related pumps, piping, cooling systems, valves, instrumentation and controls
  • Design of facilities to maintain a sterile environment in yeast handling rooms including HEPA filtered / U/V sterilized +ve pressure air supplies and building air cooling and dehumidification systems.

Fermentation and Ageing

  • CCT tank farms for either uni-tank or multi-use systems
  • CO2 collection facilities
  • CO2 Counter-pressure facilities
  • Tank CIP under CO2 counterpressure
  • Dropping coolers
  • Collection and distribution valve manifolds including all related pumps, piping, cooling systems, valves, instrumentation and controls.

Filtration and Bright Beer

  • DE Filtration
  • PVPP Filtration
  • Cross flow filtration
  • Trap filters
  • Ingredient injection systems
  • DCW blending
  • Carbonation systems
  • Touch-up cooling systems including all related pumps, piping, cooling systems, valves, instrumentation and controls.
  • Bright beer tanks
  • Bright beer distribution valve manifolds

Brewery Utilities

  • Ammonia refrigeration systems
  • Reciprocating, twin-screw, mono-screw compressors
  • Variable speed control
  • Evaporation condensers with floating pressure control
  • High and low pressure receivers
  • Dump traps
  • Air eliminators
  • Control systems for handling widely varying process loads including all related pumps, and piping systems
  • Glycol distribution systems with control systems for widely varying process loads including, ammonia/glycol chillers, including all related pumps, piping, valves, instrumentation and controls
  • Steam and condensate systems, boilers, deaerators, cogen systems
  • Brewing water deaeration systems
  • Energy and water optimization

CIP Systems

  • From small local single systems to centralized CIP systems, including design of systems for line CIP, tank CIP, tank CIP under CO2 counter-pressure.
  • Automated systems including multiple simultaneous CIP loops, automated tank make-up, in-line heat exchangers to minimize temperature shock to sensitive equipment, priority based loop selection control systems.
  • Concentrated acid and caustic handling systems, including all related pumps, piping, heating systems, valves, instrumentation and controls.

Piping Systems

  • Piping systems design from simple hose based systems for craft breweries, through manual piping systems with jumper panel connections, to fully automated double seat matrix style valving systems, for all areas of the brewing operation.

Control Systems

  • Full range of control systems from local, manual system controls, through automated centralized control systems to recipe driven oversight control of automated systems.