Cinderlands Beer Co. Discusses Growth with Trucent Centrifuge

As your brewery grows, strategizing options that could improve efficiency, volume, and fermentation time can feel elusive.

Paul Schneider, the head of brewing operations for Cinderlands Beer Co. in Pittsburgh, and his team discovered their solution while attempting to solve each of these problems in 2023.

“We purchased our centrifuge in the summer of 2023 because we needed additional capacity and didn’t have the room to accomplish that with more tanks,” he explained.

Cinderlands’ purchase of a centrifuge from Trucent solved the first problem of capacity quickly.

“We’re an urban brewpub with a lot of lines that end at our exterior walls with a kitchen and customer seating surrounding our 3,000-square-foot production area,” he said. “We knew shaving time off our batches was the most direct path to increasing production and meeting the demand that we saw in the market.

“After talking with friends and every centrifuge supplier out there, we figured that we would go from about a 17-day average fermenter residence on a dry-hopped ale to 11 or 12.”

The time savings Schneider witnessed from his Trucent centrifuge summed up about 2,500 barrels of extra capacity. The increase was massive for the 3,300-barrel-per-year brewery.

“We were also really excited about the quality implications,” Schneider said. “Especially eliminating the hop polyphenol burn from our heavily dry-hopped beers, spinning out larger solids that precipitate the medium-length proteins that form a stable haze, a general reduction in proteins and yeast cells landing in our brite tanks and one more tool to make beautifully bright beer when the target calls for that.”

The gains occurred immediately for Cinderlands.

“We put nearly every beer in our cellar through our centrifuge with as little as 16 hours of holding at fully crashed temperature before racking,” he said.

Trucent had some unique advantages that attracted Cinderlands.

“First, the OxyZero system has a guarantee of little to no dissolved oxygen pickup from centrifuge operation,” Schneider said. “We’ve seen that to be true and it was the first stop for us. Second, this machine is exceptionally quiet for its size. We stood next to machines operating from several suppliers and the direct drive build of the Trucent equipment — along with its gentle discharge — is suitable for us to have it installed in our 400-seat brewpub setting and operate while guests are in the building.”

Lastly, Schneider’s biggest concern from conversations with peers was resolved by Trucent being able to service and maintain the centrifuge faster and easier than suppliers they’d evaluated.

“We heard a few too many troubling stories from our brewer friends about high maintenance costs and lengthy service request fulfillments with other suppliers,” he said.

Cinderlands was introduced to a new bank lender that assisted in financing a portion of the new centrifuge. Additionally, the new lender has assisted them with other capital projects.

“They (Trucent) were ahead of schedule with a spec machine in their pipeline, so there was virtually no lead time — especially considering that we had some electrical work to do on our site to prep for install,” Schneider’s said. “Delivery was quick and competent. The techs who started us up were great and they fixed issues on the fly at startup that they identified before they even shipped to us. They’ve been very helpful with hopping on FaceTime calls as we have questions for them about how the machine is performing and we feel well set up to take care of the machine ourselves between the major service intervals.”

Schneider explained that Cinderlands is emphasizing West Coast IPAs, which the centrifuge has assisted with.

“We love them and see the Pittsburgh consumer headed that way — or at least we hope,” he said. “Being able to achieve very low turbidity in those beers while moving them out of the cellar quickly after they clear VDK and crash gives us the freedom to include them in the calendar and scratch the itch.

“Again, the hop flavor and aroma clarity of these beers and their stability in package is greatly improved since adding the [Trucent] centrifuge to our kit.”