A lot of hot water and steam are used to make Hoppy. The hot water and steam are all produced in the boiler room, and transported to the various departments to perform various functions via pipes that run throughout the factory.

All manufacturing equipment undergoes an automatic cleaning process called CIP cleaning, and this preliminary stage uses a large amount of hot water and steam. To fully understand hot water usage, we should consider the production process in order. First is the preparation process, where malt and lots of hot water are mixed to make malt liquor. Next, in the boiling process, the wort from the brewing process is boiled at 100°C using steam to kill bacteria. Then, in the filling process, bottles are rinsed in a steam-heated tank of water and chemicals before being filled with Hoppy product. There are two methods of sterilization process. The first is tunnel pasteurization, in which filled bottles are sent through a long tunnel. The tunnel is divided into seven layers, and hot water showers are applied to the bottles in each layer. 7 layers have different temperatures of hot water, and the temperature is gradually increased to maintain a certain temperature for sterilization. The bottles are then allowed to cool gradually. Another method of sterilization is flash pasteurization, in which the product is sterilized before bottling. It can be sterilized in just a few seconds using a heat exchange plate. Hot water created by steam heat is passed through the heat exchange plate.

The structure of the boiler and piping plays an important role in making Hoppy, just like the human heart and circulatory system. In 2016, we changed the boiler, which plays the role of the heart, to a high-efficiency boiler. High efficiency means you can make more hot water with less fuel. By adopting this advanced boiler, we have reduced 63 kiloliters of crude oil equivalent per year. This represents a reduction of 165 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

episode 2
High Efficiency Boilers