With the growing popularity of craft beers, there are now nearly 9,000 micro breweries in the United States. If there’s not one in your town yet, give it time.

To the beer consumer, the appeal is in the authenticity and the novelty. There’s something very satisfying about a beer made by a small start up business of recent college graduates, old chums or even a local family. Many of the tasting notes are unusual and unexpected (grapefruit, coffee, chocolate, flowers, etc.), yet still refreshing and enjoyable. Ordering beer flights and visiting new breweries has become a favorite pastime of discerning U.S. beer drinkers.

The appeal of starting and operating a small brewery is in the satisfaction of creating a winning formula that develops a following. Some breweries get purchased by the commercial conglomerates, while others remain steadfastly independent. In either case, setting up a brewery requires more than just vats, kegs, and hops. The process, from the lab to the shipping dock, calls for high-quality instruments for weighing and measuring. This is where OHAUS comes into play.
 

Essential Weighing

As with cooking and baking, craft brewing is all about the recipe. The right balance of the key ingredients – grain, hops, yeast, water, and additional unique flavors - is essential. Any brewery will have supplies of grain (typically malted barley), different varieties of hops, and yeast, which is used for fermentation. Carefully weighing the ingredients ensures accurate and consistent brewing. The OHAUS Valor^® Series of Compact Food Scales set the industry standard with a winning combination of durability, speed, accuracy, and touchless operation.  

Valor Food Scales are NSF-certified, USDA-AMS accepted and will support HACCP systems. These scales are designed with smooth, unobstructed surfaces that are easy to clean and free of areas where material can build up and cause contamination.

Valor 2000 and 4000 scales are suitable for harsh, wet workplace conditions so they are well suited for beer making. The scales are easy-to-use with intuitive interfaces and half-second response times to speed operator throughput.
Valor Scales feature a 304 stainless steel weighing pan, smooth profile, and easy water flow for cleaning. A unique IPX8 flow-thru design ensures that the Valor 2000 and 4000 will drain any moisture that may build up inside the scale. They feature large front and rear LED displays for easy viewing so two operators can share one scale. They are available in stainless steel and plastic housing models with sturdy polycarbonate keypads offer protection from knives and other sharp instruments used in food preparation, processing, and portioning applications.

The Valor 2000 is a quality value scale for use in dry or washdown environments for 3.3 – 60 lbs with precision from 0.2g to 5g. For additional features such as a touchless tare sensor, check weighing and percent weighing modes, the legal-for-trade Valor 4000 is the premier scale for use in dry or washdown environments. 

For smaller weighing applications, OHAUS Compass^® CX Compact Scales are an excellent choice for their space-saving design and ease-of-use. These lightweight, durable scales are slim and stackable for easy storage. 

Compass CX Scales are also designed with efficiency in mind, offering battery life of up to 1000 hours of uninterrupted operation on standard alkaline batteries. These versatile little scales provide accuracy, speed, and repeatability for a range of weighing applications. 

Available in five models to meet user needs, Compass CX features a large, backlit LCD for easy readability and simple two-button operation.

A Surprisingly Scientific Process

There is certainly a science to micro brewing. Malted barley is mashed and boiled with water to convert the starch into sugars. The liquid extracted during this process is known as the wort. Then yeast is added to ferment these sugars into alcohol over a period of days or weeks depending on the type of brew. Different varieties of hops and additional flavors are added to lend a unique flavor.
 
Experienced brewers know that a key to making high quality beer is ensuring that the pH of the water and wort is properly measured and kept in the optimum range. A good pH meter will accurately measure pH and clearly display results. OHAUS offers a range of Water Analysis Meters and Electrodes, from Starter™ Portable models to advanced AquaSearcher™ Bench Top models.

OHAUS Starter Portable models offer convenience with small, battery powered operation. The small, but mighty instruments are surprisingly loaded with features like auto calibration and temperature compensation, library data storage, and high visibility digital readouts. Advanced portable models are waterproof with sturdy housing well-suited to brewery operations.