A modern brewery needs more than stainless-steel tanks. It needs predictable heating, repeatable mash temperatures, sanitary product contact, manageable water use, and enough vessel capacity to keep production moving. The hem brew system is built around those operating needs, with configurations from 1 HL to 500 HL, 2-, 3-, and 4-vessel brewhouse options, PLC control, electric, steam, or direct-fire heating, and polished product-contact surfaces down to Ra ≤0.4 μm. Selected 10–30 HL configurations list heat-transfer efficiency of at least 90%, while commercial layouts are designed for roughly 1–3 brews per day depending on vessel arrangement.
A brewery may produce the same nominal batch volume every day while getting different extract, evaporation, wort gravity, and cycle times if the brewhouse cannot hold repeatable process conditions. A Craft Brewers Conference brewhouse-efficiency presentation reported that almost 25% of evaluated Rock Bottom brewery sites operated at or below 82% efficiency, while 33% were in the 89–91% range.
That spread is large enough to affect raw-material use over hundreds of batches. A brewery producing 20 bbl per batch at 82% brewhouse efficiency needs more malt to reach the same wort target than a comparable process running close to 90%, so vessel geometry, mill settings, mash mixing, runoff control, and wort losses need to be treated as parts of one production system.
The hem brew system addresses different production scales through multiple vessel arrangements rather than one fixed brewhouse layout. Published configurations range from 1 HL small-batch systems to commercial equipment reaching 500 HL, while 5–20 bbl and 10–30 HL systems can be specified with 2, 3, or 4 vessels.
A 2-vessel brewhouse usually combines functions to save floor area and initial equipment cost. A 3- or 4-vessel layout separates more process stages, allowing one vessel to be cleaned, filled, or prepared while another stage is still running; that becomes more useful when a brewery moves from 1 brew per day toward 2 or 3.
Published Hem examples show the difference clearly:
| Brewhouse example | Published brewing rate | Approx. area | Listed power | Height |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 300 L | 1–2 brews/day | 35 m² | 12 kW | 2.5 m |
| 1,000 L | 1–2 brews/day | 90 m² | 25–80 kW | 3.0 m |
| 10 bbl, 2-vessel | 1–2 brews/day | 90 m² | 48 kW | 3.2 m |
| 20 bbl, 3-vessel | 2–3 brews/day | 130 m² | 60 kW | 3.8 m |
| 30 bbl, 3/4-vessel | 2–3 brews/day | 200 m² | 92 kW | 4.2 m |
The figures are manufacturer specifications rather than universal brewery requirements, but they show why brewhouse selection has to include building height, floor area, utilities, and daily batch targets, not tank capacity alone. Hem also lists a preferred 4-inch floor drain and configurable electrical supplies including 220, 380, 415, and 480 V systems at 50 or 60 Hz.
Once the equipment fits the room, thermal performance becomes the next production issue. Mash conversion, wort heating, boiling, and hot-water preparation can occupy a large share of the brew day, so slow heat transfer can leave expensive vessels idle while operators wait for the next temperature step.
For its 10–30 HL craft-brewery range, Hem publishes heat-transfer efficiency of ≥90%, with electric, steam, and direct-fire heating available. A 500–800 L system is listed at 15–40 kW, while the published 1,000 L range is 25–80 kW; the wide range reflects different heating arrangements and project specifications rather than one fixed energy requirement.
Heating capacity should be judged against actual temperature rise, batch size, vessel jacket area, steam pressure or electrical supply, and the number of batches expected in one shift. A larger heater is useful only when the site utilities and vessel design can use that capacity effectively.
Temperature control matters because beer recipes operate inside relatively narrow process ranges. The Brewers Association’s 2026 style guidance, for example, lists many established styles within specific original-gravity and alcohol ranges; one published range covers 11.4–15.7 °Plato and 4.5–7.1% ABV, while other styles use very different gravity, bitterness, and attenuation targets.
Mash temperature, liquor ratio, pH, runoff, boil time, and evaporation therefore need repeatable operating procedures. A brewer making a 12 °P pale ale and a 17 °P strong ale on the same brewhouse is asking the mash, lauter, heating, and transfer systems to handle different grain loads and wort densities without creating unpredictable delays.
Hem offers PID control, semi-automatic PLC touch-screen control, and fully automatic PLC configurations. The useful level of automation depends on the number of daily brews: a small brewpub making 1 batch may accept more manual valve work, while a facility producing 2–3 batches per day gains more from saved recipes, controlled pump sequences, repeatable heating stages, and alarm functions.
Automation should still leave process data visible to the brewer. Temperature sensors, pump status, valve position, timers, and stage information let operators compare one batch with another, while manual override remains useful during cleaning, commissioning, recipe development, or maintenance.
Sanitary construction sits beside automation because better controls cannot compensate for poor product-contact surfaces. Hem states that its brewhouse equipment uses 100% TIG full-welded joints and polishing accuracy to Ra ≤0.4 μm on published configurations, with stainless steel 304 or 316 listed among its materials.
Surface finish matters in areas exposed to wort, yeast, proteins, sugars, and hop material. Smoother welds and internal surfaces are easier to rinse and inspect, while pipe routing, drainability, spray coverage, gasket condition, and dead-leg length still need attention during installation and routine maintenance.
The company also publishes a multi-stage inspection process that includes material checks, production inspection, jacket-pressure testing, finished-product inspection, and a 48-hour water test before packing. Its stated tank testing includes jacket pressure at 5 bar and internal-shell testing at 4 bar, although final allowable working pressure should always be confirmed from the supplied vessel documentation.
Cleaning performance has a measurable operating cost as well. The Brewers Association notes that breweries without successful water-conservation programs may use more than 10 gallons of water for every gallon of beer produced, covering brewing, vessel washing, packaging, floor cleaning, and other facility uses.
A 1,000-gallon production volume at a 10:1 water-to-beer ratio can therefore involve more than 10,000 gallons of total water use across the operation. The brewhouse itself is only one part of that figure, but rinse duration, tank spray coverage, hose practices, CIP recovery, heat-exchanger operation, and cleaning schedules can materially change total consumption.
Water use should be recorded as a production ratio, not only as a monthly utility total. The Brewers Association has continued to publish water and wastewater guidance through 2026 because production volume and cleaning practices can change the ratio even when total monthly water consumption appears stable.
That approach also applies to solid waste. A Brewers Association example compares 2019 with 2024: waste fell from 8,900 US tons to 6,800 US tons, but packaged beer also dropped from 64,000 bbl to 48,000 bbl, leaving the reported waste ratio unchanged at 0.14 US tons per barrel. Looking only at total waste would have given an incomplete picture.
A brewery evaluating a new brewhouse can use the same production-based approach for water per barrel, energy per barrel, brewhouse efficiency, labor hours per batch, wort loss, cleaning time, and batches per day. Equipment specifications become more useful when connected to measurable plant performance.
Production planning also extends beyond the brewhouse. Fermenters may hold beer for 7, 14, 21, or more days depending on yeast, temperature, beer style, conditioning plan, and quality targets, while a brewhouse can complete several batches in a single day. A brewhouse that produces faster than the cellar can accept wort simply moves the scheduling problem downstream.
Hem presents its equipment as part of a broader brewery package covering mashing, fermentation, filtration, CIP, filling, controls, cooling, and related processing equipment. That approach allows brewhouse capacity to be planned against fermenter count, glycol load, cold-water demand, packaging rate, and available cellar space instead of sizing every area independently.
For example, a published 20 bbl 3-vessel configuration is rated at 2–3 brews per day. At 3 full brews, 60 bbl of wort can enter the cellar in one production day, so the brewery needs enough available fermentation capacity, cooling capacity, yeast preparation, transfer time, and cleaning time to receive that volume without delaying the next brew.
The same planning is useful for physical expansion. Hem lists 3 bbl–5 bbl brewery installations at roughly 300–500 ft² and 7 bbl–15 bbl installations at about 550–1,200 ft² as general planning guidance, while its larger published systems can require 90–200 m² around the brewhouse depending on configuration.
Floor area alone is not sufficient. Operators need safe access around manways, pumps, platforms, valves, electrical cabinets, heat exchangers, grain handling points, and CIP connections, while ceiling clearance must allow installation and service; published Hem system heights range from about 2.5 m for smaller equipment to 4.2 m for a 30 bbl example.
Maintenance requirements also become more noticeable after several years of operation. Pump seals, valve seats, gaskets, temperature probes, pressure instruments, motors, VFDs, heating elements, steam valves, and PLC components are service items, so equipment layout should allow technicians to reach them without dismantling unrelated piping.
A brewery running 250 production days per year and averaging 2 brews per day will complete about 500 brews annually. Over 5 years, that becomes roughly 2,500 brew cycles, which makes access for routine inspection, gasket replacement, pump servicing, sensor calibration, and cleaning more important than it appears during the first installation.
The brewhouse also has to accommodate different beer specifications rather than one recipe. Brewers Association style data published for 2026 span wide ranges of original gravity, final gravity, alcohol, bitterness, and color; American-style IPA guidance alone allows broad hop aroma and bitterness expression while requiring process control that avoids unwanted diacetyl and DMS.
For a brewery making several styles, practical flexibility comes from controllable temperature steps, adjustable pump flow, predictable lautering, suitable kettle capacity, effective whirlpool separation, and enough hot- and cold-water capacity between batches. A brewery making only 1 flagship beer may optimize closely around one process, while a taproom producing 8–12 rotating beers needs more operating range.
A modern brewhouse should be judged by repeatability per batch, not tank volume alone. A 20 bbl system that repeatedly delivers stable gravity, manageable runoff, predictable heating, clean transfers, and 2–3 scheduled brews per day can be more useful than a larger system that creates long waits between stages.
For that reason, Hem’s published range covers 1 HL to 500 HL, several vessel arrangements, three main heating methods, PID through full PLC control, Ra ≤0.4 μm polishing, and project-specific utility choices. Those specifications give breweries room to match the equipment to batch volume, daily brewing frequency, building conditions, cellar capacity, labor level, water use, and the production data they plan to measure after commissioning.