What a 500L system actually is

A 5HL brewhouse sits between pilot brewing and full commercial output. Most customers arrive at this size after running 200L batches for a year or two and hitting a wall: the fermenter empties faster than it fills, and keg orders start backing up. The 500L skid gives you roughly 5BBL per brew, two brews a day on a good schedule, without committing to the tank farm a 10HL line demands.

Our standard configuration is a two-vessel brewhouse — mash/lauter combined and kettle/whirlpool combined — with a separate hot liquor tank. Three-vessel layouts are available when you brew decoction or run back-to-back batches and cannot afford lauter downtime. That decision usually comes down to your brew schedule, not your budget.

Materials and fabrication

Wetted surfaces are SUS304 3mm plate as standard. We switch to 316L when the customer brews with high chloride water, sours regularly, or runs CIP with aggressive caustic-acid cycles — not because 304 fails in normal service, but because pitting starts at the weld HAZ and that is expensive to repair later.

Interior welds are ground flush and pickled and passivated; the product contact finish is 0.6μm Ra or better. Exterior is a 2B mill finish with brushed bands on request. Dimple jackets on the cone and lower cylinder handle glycol at 0.3MPa working pressure, and the inner tank is rated 0.15MPa with a 0.2MPa relief valve — the valve protects the tank, the jacket has its own safety loop. Standard clamps are DIN or TC, your choice at order.

Where this size fits

Brewpubs with 8–12 taps, contract brewers running small-brand packaging, and breweries using a 500L system as a pilot line ahead of a 20HL brewhouse. Taproom-only operations typically run two 500L unitanks and one 1000L bright tank; production-focused customers go to four fermenters and a glycol chiller sized for 15kW at full load.

Specifications

Questions we get before quotes

Conical or dish bottom? Cone for anything you ferment — yeast cropping and trub dumping matter more than the extra cost. Dish bottoms only make sense on bright tanks.

Can I CIP without disassembly? Yes, if the spray ball is correctly sized and the pump delivers the flow rate at the head pressure. Undersized CIP pumps are the most common mistake we see on imported systems.

How do I pipe glycol? One supply and one return header, solenoid per tank, and a chiller sized on total jacket volume plus 20% headroom. Do not undersize for summer.

Tell us your batch size, beer type, number of fermentation tanks and available space. We can recommend the tank volume, cooling area and configuration for your brewery.