Ep 42 - Chillers, Heat Recovery & OpEx: What Every Brewer Needs to Know - Jon Keyte

This year alone, I’ve seen multiple breweries unknowingly bleed cash through their refrigeration systems.

Why?

Because chillers are often misunderstood, undersized or poorly maintained. And they happen to be one of the biggest operational costs in any brewery.

In this episode, I sit down with Jon Keyte from RefCool, one of the sharpest minds in refrigeration, to break down everything a brewer needs to know about chillers. From sizing to heat recovery, operational efficiency and how you can use your chiller to heat water to 50c.

If you're buying a chiller, running a chiller, or trying to save energy in your brewery, this is essential listening.

What we cover:
•⁠  ⁠Why chillers are often over sized and draining your margins
•⁠  ⁠How to correctly size a chiller (it’s not what you think)
•⁠  ⁠The truth about compressor types, ambient temperatures and glycol tanks
•⁠  ⁠Heat recovery that turns cooling into hot water
•⁠  ⁠How to monitor, maintain and future-proof your system
•⁠  ⁠Real world CapEx versus OpEx comparisons that could save you thousands

This one is practical, no nonsense and deeply important for any brewer looking at a new chiller or looking to reduce their operational costs.

Chapters 

00:00 Welcome to the Modern Brewer Podcast
00:24 Highlights from the CIBD Sustainability Conference
02:42 Chris's Controversial Presentation
05:02 We Are Beer Industry Expo
06:35 Brewing World Updates
07:23 Exciting News from Francesco Lo Bue
08:34 Introduction to Today's Episode
09:48 Understanding Brewery Refrigeration
11:09 Meet John Keyte, Refrigeration Expert
13:34 The Importance of Correct Chiller Sizing
24:02 Types of Compressors and Their Impact
24:29 The Role of Ambient Temperature
27:42 Glycol Buffer Tanks and Efficient Chiller Operation
32:55 Monitoring and Optimising Chiller Performance
34:15 Choosing the Right Chiller for Your Brewery
35:15 Efficiency of Running Multiple Chillers
37:14 Assessing Chiller Operational Costs
40:18 Calculating Chilling Power and COP
41:59 CapEx vs. OpEx in Chiller Selection
42:35 Refrigerant Gases and Their Impact
49:19 Heat Recovery in Refrigeration Systems
57:38 Resilience and Maintenance of Chillers
01:03:16 Top Tips for Brewers on Refrigeration
01:05:02 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Thank you to our amazing show sponsors, Brewing Trade - The hop market, owned by brewers.

Exclusive Brewing Trade offer - £17.33 p/kg Talus on Brewing Trade

Weekly Education Email on Hops - Francesco Lo Bue

Refrigeration Circuit link 

Jons Newsletter

Jons LinkedIn

Transcript

0:12

Hello everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of the Modern Brewer Podcast with me, your host, Chris Lewington. Well, it's great to be back. July was actually honestly such a great month. first for those who attended or may have heard of it, there was the CIBD sustainability conference. Naturally something that I was gonna be in love with. it was the first of its kind. I've never seen a full conference on sustainability like this in the brewing industry. And actually it was the first conference the CIBD has done in over 15 years. I obviously knew what to expect content wise, sustainability, but I feel like a lot of these conferences live and die by their organization, their goals, the speakers, and the agenda of the speakers as well. but this was honestly one of the best conferences I've been to.'cause it ticked all of those boxes. Having, I think having such a dedicated focus was great.'cause it kind of meant all the topics were instantly relevant and they mattered to everyone in the room. And there was a pretty high level of understanding of sustainability in the room. So. Quite a lot of the talks got to circumnavigate. The why is this important, which often ends up being the first 10 minutes of every sustainability talk because we all knew there was important. also, I mean, the quality of speaker was literally out of this world. There was Professor Charlie Bamforth, Tom Brewer, for anyone who's had the privilege of listening to him speak. He's the global sustainability lead at AB InBev, pretty big job. Mike Barry, who's I've never met before, but he's the director or former director of sustainability m and s. There's been like white papers written on the stuff that he's done in sustainability. Kristen Hughes, she's the global head of sustainability at Diageo. Like the list goes on. There's Heineken, Molson, Coors, so many of the biggest and greatest breweries. so it meant you got to mingle with these people as well, right? So not only you get to listen to the speaker, you go up and ask'em questions, and I just found like, when do you ever get this? also what's really special about the event is they had panels. All of these people, all of these heads of global sustainability in the largest, most competitive breweries in the industry, all on the panel sharing their wins, goals, areas, improvement, strategy. Like when does this happen? When, have you ever seen all of these people doing that?, Yeah and then on the final day, this idiot had to go up on stage after Tom Brewer just gave a ludicrously, charismatic, engaging, and interesting presentation where he talks about the issues he faces in over 170 breweries. That is, that they're in charge of, in terms of sustainability and. I was going in there talking about just the problems I had in just one, which was of course, the Vault City project I'd been working on. for reasons I can't really quite understand I was writing my, presentation a couple weeks before. I was like, I kinda wanna be controversial and I kind of wanna do something quite different because. I did feel that potentially the problem with a big sustainability conference is everyone's banging in the same drum, and actually, do we always talk about the reality of some of the situations that people face, especially with sustainability, and that it's not just an environmental sustainability, vanity project. This is, you know, we're looking at the financial sustainability as well, which a lot of. Potentially the bigger brewers don't see in their sustainability plan because they get, they're given budgets, they're, you know, they spend within the budget, they've got to allocate. But their goal is net zero. a craft brewery's goal is not net zero. It's having a sustainable business. It's here for the future. and often a craft brewery is one bad financial decision away from going under. So it's really important that we don't treat sustainability as a vanity project, which is why I wanted to do so. Long and short of this is basically I stood in front of the greatest minds of sustainability and brewing and told them that I advised Vault City to buy a secondhand gas fired steam boiler. which pretty controversial as a concept. I like to say I did back it up with other things, you know, just optimizing your processes the best way there. Novel ideas, of how to decarbonize. But, you know, trying to invest in new heating technology right now, it just doesn't make sense to me. And I think, you know, I was a bit nervous after it 'cause I was like, God, what have I just done? But a few people said it was nice to hear something honest. So hopefully it's all the other people who just think I'm idiot now. A video of this, is actually available for those who attended. It's available right now for those who didn't, A video of all of the talks, will in the main room, will be available, in December I believe. So just keep your eyes peeled. I will definitely share a few clips on my socials, et cetera. and then, yeah, I'll share links in here in the future so you can have a look at that. I also, this is why July was so great. It was also the we are beer industry expo. I hosted the stage for the first time in my life, which was pretty exciting. And then I also gotta speak with my very good friend and former podcast friend as well. George Wade of Shock Horror. We talked about sustainability. this is a very different event actually, and experience. there was not one talk on how to brew beer, which was. Different. It was all about branding, marketing, sales, financial economics are brewing and I think that's a true testament to where our industry has gone over the last three or so years. You know, no longer are we talking about the best lager recipe. It's now the best branding for your lager and how it's gonna hit the right demographics. And who is that demographics and what do they care about? I think the event was very brave to put on. It's the first of its kind that I can remember. I could be wrong, but I've never seen anything like this before. The speakers again were amazing and the narrative was also really good. It was kind of formulated content rather than speak about what you want. So that meant. That was actually quite a lot of themes and narratives and things you could pick up on, which was great. I also got to think about branding of my own businesses, which was pretty exciting. It was nice. Never really get to think about that. so yeah, I think that they were both very different, but also very good events. I will say that actually over both events, I had a lot of people come up to me and say they listened to the show and they actually enjoy it, which is really nice to hear. this honestly does mean the world to me. so yeah, thanks to everyone who said that. Whilst we're on brewing world updates, I've got a couple more for you here. I'd just like to say actually the brewing trade, you know, one of the companies I co-founded has actually been kicking off for the last two months, is why this podcast is slightly delayed. one of our sellers has actually even sold their entire. Citra and mosaic surplus, which is over 10 tons. the prices were insane. They were selling it at 23 pounds, 10 per kilo for Citra. That's absolutely no joke for anyone who purchases hops. Some know that's an insane deal. they're sadly gone. Now, that's all sold out, but we currently have tallus. At 17 pound 33 a kilo, which has just been flying since then. I've put a link to it in the show notes. I, as it is, that's how this website works. Once it's gone. So check it out, see what you think. and if you've got any questions, you know, refer them over to me. Finally, in the world of brewing. This is a really exciting update. My really good friend, my, basically my brother, Francesco Buie, has been writing a weekly educational email on hops. it's, I honestly naively thought I knew. Hops pretty well, you would think I would after having a business in it and working in breweries. And I didn't like the level of insight that he shares is something I am in awe of Every single week he's reading all the latest research and translating it into, you know, action that you can take in the brewery. Sharing stories that I've sometimes been a part of, sometimes not, and his first, from his firsthand brewery floor experience. I just wanted to think it's outstanding, so I just really wanna give him a shout out. It's free.

It lands 8: 8:01

00 AM every Monday, and I think it's just a great way to start your week. I put a link in the show notes. Within that, there's actually also a free guide on how to read and understand your hop certificate of analysis. Again, most people get them, do they fully understand them? And can you use them to get better hops and better beer at the end of the day? And that's what he's writing about. So yeah, check that out. It's in the show notes. simple sign up and then, yeah, you get that in your inbox every Monday. Okay. So now let's finally get into today's episode. I think I mentioned this before, definitely my talks. pretty sure I might have on the podcast as well, but I've been working in a brewery in Europe recently, and I saw firsthand just how expensive chillers, can be to run. that the forgotten child of most breweries, right? They're just left to work tirelessly outside. you only speak to them when they stop working and you kick off when they do because everything goes, you know, everything goes to shit. Everyone's complaining, especially in the summer. But have you ever actually really got to understand it, understand how it works, how operationally you can reduce its cost, but then also have you ever sized one up? And if you have. Have you done it correctly? Because as soon as you size that thing up wrong, you are inflating your energy bills. Your cash flow's gonna be tough, and it's just basically gonna hold you back from the sustainability targets. So in today's episode, we're gonna unpack one of the most mis, misunderstood and overlooked parts of any brewery, which is the refrigeration plant. And trust me, you do not want to learn these lessons the hard way after you've already invested in a chiller outside of that project in Europe, I'd actually been sizing a chiller for Vault City and. That's where I met today's guest, John. I realized just how easy. It is to mess up a chiller sizing. the classic calculation that people use will literally, if you use that calculation, you will be costing your brewery thousands in waste electricity. I actually guarantee it from the work that I've done now. there's also so many options out there. You can have a chiller with a return on investment as it can actually have a hundred percent heat recovery, which is just something that's really crazy. we're gonna go into that, into this episode. I genuinely believe that they're gonna play a really important role because of this. They're gonna play an important role in Brewings future in the sustainability world. we're also gonna go through how chillers work, and so you can understand their operational costs and what you can do. I've also learned there's a lot of charlatans out there in the refrigeration world. So with the information in this episode, I guarantee you'll be able to size a chiller correctly and keep an eye out for those bad suppliers offering oversized units. Today's guest is John Kite, founder of Refco, a refrigeration expert who not only broke it down all for me, but completely shifted how I think about cooling, heat recovery, and long-term operational planning. John is An expert in refrigeration. He writes a niche, which I always appreciate, but fantastic newsletter on refrigeration. And today he's gonna help us avoid some expensive pitfalls and help us optimize the opex or the operational expenditure of your chiller. so if you're buying it new chiller, this is an essential listen. But if you want to reduce your brewery's running costs, reduce its impact on environment, and generally get to know more about this forgotten child, this will be a lot more fun than refrigeration might sound. So welcome to the show, John Kite. I. Thank you very much. Very pleased to be here. Certainly. Yes, very exciting, John. I mean, you know, I said it just at the start, we met on the Vault City project as I've met so many people on that talking about chillers and refrigeration. And then I had firsthand experience recently of how, what happens when it all goes wrong. So I'm actually really glad we can do this episode together and we can go through everything.'cause I know you're such an expert in this area. Well, I like to think I know a few things about, but Yes. Yeah. From experience. From experience. Yeah. so John, not everyone is niche into refrigeration like I am, and they might not follow your newsletter, and follow you on LinkedIn. So for those people who don't, can you just give us a bit of background of who you are, how you started, and basically how did you land in this spot here today? So, so, I'm managing director of Revco. Refco is a small business. We manufacture, some particularly energy efficient chillers for the, for oncology machines. We manufacture, pasteurizer and a few other small bespoke machines. we also have our own set of service engineers around the country. so we will, make, sell other people's chillers, install, maintain in service. yeah, it's been, I got into this business. I was an accountant previously and then there was an opportunity to move into the business side and, look at selling chillers, and specking and, supporting. And so, yeah, so I did that, 10 years ago. And, still at it and still enjoying it, still learning lots. So it's, always think if you're learning lots and, you're able to help people. That's good. So, here we are. Yeah, and it's definitely, I guess for a lot of brewers, definitely myself, when I was, you know, brewing as well, the refrigeration plant's, just a little bit of a black hole of your knowledge. you often, as I said right at the start of this, it's the kind of forgotten child. It's as long as it's working and it's doing what you need it to do in the right time, generally you don't think about too much else. and so that's why I'm like quite keen to have you here to sort of educate us all a little bit more about it. but first, I know that you write that newsletter 'cause I read it, but when did you start that and why did you start that?'cause it's pretty niche, which I always respect. We started, about. Three and a half years ago, it was just a way of putting some information out there exactly as you say. it's actually one of the things refrigeration accountants see have in common. They both go, buy the buy, never notice until there's a problem. So I find that similarity quite difficult on occasion. But, yeah. so, and there's a lack of information from people about how refrigeration works. even from, you know, you might not need to know how the black box works, but even to make the black box work as effective as it should do, there's some easy things to do. And, we've also end up doing some things on the website around actually giving people support when chillers fail, as to things you can do, which you're not a, if you're not an FGA engineer, which might sort things out. Yes. Yeah.'cause it's complex. I mean, even, I guess there's reason a lot of people don't know is because it is actually quite complex to understand all the intricacies of it. It took me quite a lot of time to get my head around the whole concept, which you obviously helped out so much with. and then also there's just so much opportunity now with heat recovery, you know, reducing the opex of your machine and everything that, yeah. That's why I think it's, it's, the episode is gonna be pretty sweet for anyone who's listening. I'm pretty excited. So, so it's also true to say that quite often the chiller is fails and it may well fail for not, it is nothing to do with the chiller. The chiller is part of a larger process, because of its nature is designed to protect itself. So if it feels it's a situation where it might damage itself, it will likely switch off rather than actually fundamentally break. and therefore we find ourselves and we attend, breakdowns and things, often commenting on the other system that the chiller is supplying as opposed to chiller because And so in that regard, chillers get a bad rep and I feel like we need to put one forward. this is it. This is the podcast of Redemption for Chillers. and it, this is the point where everyone turns off. Yeah. Okay. so let's just go in because I, again, I think this is good for everyone. Just to refresh, or maybe just start, how do chillers or refrigeration plants actually work, especially in the brewing context? I just wanted to start with saying most of the occasions where the chillers are working, they're working with, glyco water. Mixture, they're feeding cold round a circuit. and there might be two different types of chillers. Typically, a chiller might have its own internal tank, so it will call that tank and then send that, glycol water out. Or it might be what we call a flow cooler where you don't bother with a tank and it just, takes the glyco straight in, calls it and then takes it out. so basically you can think of a chiller as a tank of cold water, and a pump. and that's probably the best way to think about it from a layman's perspective. the only thing I would say is basically the chiller just removes heat. And it removes it through its circuit, and then it is typically blown into the air, through, a coil, a fan coil that blows that heat into the air. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. as you said, I think anyone who's worked with a chillo will always sit there and feel the heat coming off the side of it. And that's something that we will be talking about later on, how to potentially recapture some of that waste heat. yeah, if you could just maybe just go into the refrigeration circuit Yeah. So we just talked about the tank, option. So if you had a, most chillers would have a tank in them and the tank would have an evaporator in it, and the evaporator delivers the cooling into the tank, and the evaporator is part of what we call the refrigeration circuit. so, what happens is that the, refrigerant gas passes through the evaporator into the compressor where it's compressed. and that transfers the heat up. So, so, an example would be if you are a, if you are pumping up a bicycle tire, you're compressing air to put, and that generates heat, and that heat is exactly what the compressor generates and puts into the system that then gets, sent out through the condenser. Which is typically like a car, engine radiator with a fan behind it. And the fan then pushes air across the radiator, taking all that heat and emitting it. and then the refrigerant gas going through that circuit comes back into an expansion valve, where it, then reverts back to a more normal state before going back into the evaporator again and continuing to cool, the water in the tank. Yes. Yeah, so what I'll do is,'cause I, know, a lot of people are visual learners in the brewing industry. so I will find if you, I dunno if you have one on your website. If they do, perfect. If not, I'll find one just to, so people can see how a refrigeration circuit works.'cause once you've just listened to what John said and you see it, it just makes perfect sense. Like, I get it how it all works. Yeah. I can send you something through fairly easily. It tends to be just a straight square with the, you are four sides to, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think it really helps just the understanding of how a cooling circuit works. So in this context of this, I think that. The implications of undersizing, a chiller are probably mainly in the process side. So that would be, for example, your crash cooling takes longer than you want it to. Or if you are running it on the back of like a separator, you're cooling, you can't quite achieve the liquid, the at the flow rate. That's kind of what happens when you undersize. and that drives a lot of fear in the brewing industry. I feel that a lot of It drives a lot of fear with everyone who uses chillers, basically, that you would take it. Yes, exactly. Because they're like, okay, well the last thing I want is to run out of cooling capacity in my breweries, so I'll make sure that I add an extra 15 20% of cooling capacity just in case I need it. So that's quite common in the brewing industry like, but what are the implications of oversizing So the implications of oversizing are that, particularly where you have your tank of water, it is that the, compressor on the chiller clicks on and off more regularly. as with most, electrical items, like a compressor is the starting phase that is most inefficient and the news is most current. and so if you are, if you have it clicking on and off, not only does it wear the compressor hugely, I mean, typically you measure a compressor's life and the number of starts and stops. If you're starting and stopping 10 times an hour, then that's an awful lot of starts and stops an awful lot of life in a short period of time. not only is it electrically inefficient, but you also have run through that compressor's life in short order. That's what it is. When you are oversizing, you are basically running it inefficiently because it needs to do more of the start stops, and it's the start that is the most Yeah. for the least reward, Yeah. It draws all the current, this is not necessarily the brilliant industry. we had a customer in the, in the packaging industry. who wondered why their chiller kept on breaking down regularly. Well, the answer was, they went through the exercise to make sure they were never, ever run outta cold and they were running a chiller that was eight times the size of the load they needed even at peak. And so this thing was stopping and starting 15 times an hour and it would break down every six months or so just 'cause it was stopping and starting that much. And then the electrical efficiency we run, the efficiency measure we often use is, COP. Which is the amount of cooling per kilowatt of electricity. And, so we'd be looking at about three for a good chiller. And actually, this chiller was running at one. So, by just downsizing the chiller by a quarter to a quarter of its original size, we not only save them huge electrical costs, but also enhance the life of the chiller. So it makes a big difference, Yeah. And that's almost was very similar to what I saw at the brewery I was working at. It was, so, the compressor starts were, I think it was 60 in a 12 hour right. and. It was closer to sort of 1.1, than it should have been. You know, it should have been around two as a COP, so it was using almost twice the electricity it should be Oops. which is a lot 'cause it's around, in a brewery, it's around 40% of the whole of the electricity Okay. It's just coming from that refrigeration plant. And if that's double, Yeah, it makes a huge difference. Yeah. makes a huge difference. What sort of compressor starts are normal in a day or in 12 hour period? What are those two or three an hour perhaps. That sort of time. it's all, all dependent on how you size the machine. basically, it, what also happens, I probably forgot to mention, is that some of the manufacturers actually prevent their compressors from coming on, on, on and off too regularly in an hour. So there will be a mandatory stop time, so you'll only be allowed, four starts an hour or three starts an hour, that sort of idea. which means that then plays into your brewer's, worst nightmares of them not getting cooling. And they wonder why, and they think the chill is broken, when in fact the compressor's just saying, no, I'm not gonna, and 12 an hour I'm gonna wait. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, the key issue with oversizing, right? Absolutely. just, yeah. Means that it's running inefficiently, then it's gonna More aware. Yeah. the wear is Yeah. And you might not even get to that. You might not even get to that stage. If you have a big machine where the compressor is limited and it starts, which can be quite often, then you have the machine stopping and you wonder why, Yes. won't help your process. Are they the type of, are chill is the type of machine that like to be running all the time or, they're more efficient the longer they run, basically. It's very much so, yeah. and it depends what type of, compressors you're talking about, but the modern scroll compressors and, the big, screw compressors, they, yes, they do definitely like to be run. and the screw compressors in particular would be ramped up and ramped down rather than being switched off. switching off it takes a lot outta them. Yeah. So that's actually leading me onto a really good point 'cause this is what I learned a lot from you, John, is the types of compressors and how they impact the correct sizing of a chiller. So talking about scroll compressors, inverters, different steps. Maybe we can go into that to give the listeners sort of an understanding of, if you can't run it a hundred percent, which we realistically won't be able to do all the time, what then impacts how you can correct, correctly before going to that, it is worth just making a comment about, ambient temperature. And so that, ambient temperature has a big effect on the power the chiller can put out. and so frequently we size against a maximum summer temperature, which we are currently doing is 35 degrees. And everyone will say, well, hang on, 35 degrees isn't enough.'cause yesterday it was 30 summer, but. The power available at 37 is less than the power available at 25. So this is why that maybe, you can have, an oversized chiller at 25 degrees, which is correctly deci sized at ambient 35 degrees, and any brewery is not gonna suddenly change its chillers around depending on what the, ambient temperature is. Yeah. So what would you recommend to be an ambient, a correct ambient temperature for while we're in the uk? So let's just take the So, so, so we do the 35, but just bear in mind, that's a maximum. that's not a, that will not be a regular week in, week out. It won't be operating at 35 degree am. Depending on how you position it. If you position it without a decent airflow, it might be a continuous 35, but in most cases, it would vary up and down, so you get more capacity out of it at the lower ambient temperature. So coming back to what you were saying about compressors, so when you're sizing, it's, one of the elements I would look at it with sizing is you try and size it to make sure it can achieve the required load in a 35 degree ambient. But then we try and do an exercise where we look at part load and make sure it can run efficiently at part load.'cause if it's the same load at 25 degree ambient, you probably find you only need 70% of the power. And if you this is where we were talking, I think with the vault number, other projects, if you have a single compressor, it only switches on and off and you're trying to get it to run at 70% power, as with some of the smaller. units, all it will do is switch on and off. Yeah. you a hundred percent, then it has enough, and then it'll switch off, and then it'll switch on again when it's required. and, so we try and make sure we have either multiple compressors, multiple scroll compressors to give you what we call capacity steps. so if you have a four, compressor chiller, it will probably have 25% capacity steps as it brings on each of those compressors. without an inverter, the compressors can only run at full pace or none. and so it is the only efficient way to do it is to run it 25% power, 50% power, 75% power, or hundred percent power. that works very effectively and it's, it's one of those key things you need to look at when you're sizing a chiller. Yes. Yeah.'cause I think we all just look at the output. Okay. It's a hundred kilowatt chiller in terms of cooling capacity and then you, that's kind of what you size. What often you would size it to is actually what does it generally run at. if that's on average, running at 25, 30 kilowatts and then only spiking to a hundred, then you're actually running it really inefficiently Absolutely. If you've got just a classic one scroll compressor. Absolutely. and you know, there, there are some people who would run buffer tanks to try and, ameliorate that. So, so we would run a large cold water tank, that they call down and then that draws off and it makes sure the compressor only comes on or less often than it would do if it was once. It's one of the reasons why you have water tanks in chillers. So otherwise you do find the compressor coming on and off quite regularly. Yeah, it's actually quite interesting because a lot of the breweries I go and see, there's, there seems to be a very different, setup. So they either have, as you said, like most chillers I see in the brewing world have a small, glycol reservoir in the, in built in the chiller or next to chiller is pretty tiny. But then some brew I go into have like 10, 15, 20 HEC glycol tanks, full of glycol, you know, glycol water mix. And that's going around. Like what, why did those, why they're so different? And is there one that's maybe better or worse? Do you think? Well, maybe that's the kind of exaggerated example from a small a hundred liter tank to a big heta liter, reservoir. but the reason for it is to try and make sure that chiller is working efficiently when it works. So, so, what'll happen is the big glycol tank will warm up as it's being used and when it hits a certain temperature, the chiller will then turn on to cool that glycol tank and we'll be running for maybe an hour or a couple of hours or maybe even three hours to, to cool that glyco tank. And 'cause it's running for that length of time at full speed, it is much more efficient than trying to get it to switch on and off every 15 minutes to accommodate the smaller reservoir. so in this occasion called a large, those large reservoirs are a good idea from that respect. the only issue is they need to be insulated so they don't warm up warm and you benefit the heat. So, Yeah. Otherwise, then you're just paying to, to keep it cool. that's right. Yeah. yeah. I think we're gonna, we had a particular case study of a brewery down in, Sussex actually, who did extremely well with a buffer tank and, Managed to run with a smaller chiller than they needed for maximum load because the buffer tank then took that weight outta the system for the, three or four hours that they were brewing. And it was quite interesting. they spent a long time sizing chillers, absolutely perfectly. So this day it was absolutely running, flat out for almost 24 hours to re restock the, the reservoir as well as to load. yeah, that's, that's what I learned as well. It takes to size a chili correctly, takes quite a lot of, data and understanding of your process and your refrigeration needs. I think, you know, as I said, I've said to you, and I said, right at the top of the show. The classic way of sizing a chiller. And there's plenty of refrigeration websites that have this as their tool. you put in your fermenters the volume, how quickly your delta T, so what temperature they start, what temperature you wanna finish, and the time you want to do it. And it'll regurgitate a kilowatts Yep. to either do all of that or just like part of it. I don't know whether it's like four or five tanks and that is how a lot of chillers are sized. So they normally put some contingency on that as well. yeah, normally put some contingency on that. Exactly. That's that 20% just in case. But actually the reality of you chilling every single tank from 20 to, to two. All at the same time. It just, it doesn't exist in the real world. and therefore that instantly leads you to oversizing your chiller because now you've assumed that you will do it and you'll chill everything at the same time. So what I did Volt City is I did some pre-work before I came, to other refrigeration experts. I did my pre-work. So I mapped out what a brewery, a busy day in the brewery looks like. What is happening during that day in terms of fermentation schedule, which is actually pretty negligible. how many tanks are gonna be called if they're all gonna be called at the same time.'cause if they're not, that staggers that load Yeah. of, two days. Then if you're chilling at the back of the centrifuge, chilling for inline carbonator, et cetera, So all of this stuff is like going in, into the model, and then you can work it out. And give you an example of just how different it was. One company, right at the very start before I got involved in it, had quoted a 600 kilowatt chiller for a pro for this project. And I calculated that we needed no more at any one time, no more than 140. So as soon as you start seeing that, that's where if you were to go with the chillers based on that, if you get a five 50 watt kilo or 600 kilowatt killer for something that only needs to be ran at, you know, sort of 30, 40, 50 during the most days and speaking up to like one yep. it's like I is where your inefficiency really, that's where those, everything in efficiency about advertising will be breaking down fairly regularly because they're just not doing the load. They're not being allowed to run. Yeah. E. Yeah. So I'm very impressed with that.'cause we always shy away from that 'cause those numbers and those calculations are normally so horrendous and getting the right numbers from the brewers is very difficult. so what we normally suggest is just to put our monitoring equipment on and work out what typically gets used in, in, in a week or a couple of weeks. And we find that's always a revelation. John, that is absolutely the best way of doing it. Yeah, because they, yeah, just go through that process.'cause I don't think everyone will be aware, but if you just go through how that works, because that is like the easiest way. If you are not growing massively or moving into a new brewery and you're just trying to replicate what you have now, but more efficiently, that's definitely a hundred percent the best way of doing it. Well, I say you got my huge respect for doing your models because I would not even know where to start with it. But, what we do is we monitor the, cold water usage or the chilled water usage. So we have a machine that we would leave on site monitoring usage over typically a couple of week period. So we can see how the brewery typ typically works during those couple of weeks. and, that monitors flow temperatures, electrical usage, and enables us to then put together a good chart to see, The peaks and troughs of usage, but also how the existing chillers performing, what the part load is. so, there's one particular brewery we did down in Sussex, which showed that most of the time it was working exactly, you said about 30%. And then it had the one day, which was the brewing day when they would hit in and do a hundred percent pretty much all day, and then it would go back to 30% again. so it's no good, getting them a chiller with a single compressor that just has a hundred percent load. Yeah. So they've ended up with it with a double, I think they've ended up with a double compressor chiller, so at least they can tone down to 50% load during the rest of the week. Yeah. And that's what it, that's what a great chiller spec process looks like, is when you can. You know, take, I think there's two ways of looking at it.'cause there's two types, right? As you said, like where Sun breweries are building a new brewery with big growth potential in this sense. So you have to model what it's gonna look like in the future, but if you are replicating, it's like kind of a bulletproof way of doing it. you can work out so much and you know, a few weeks data and you don't have to do all this silly modeling that, And it's real and it's, had to, although it would be fun to do the model and then do that and then compare the two to see how accurate your model was, well, you'll find and then if it was inaccurate. the course. Yeah. Yeah. that's, it's really interesting. I've got another question for you, John as well, because I see this again differently approached in different breweries, is running multiple chillers more or less efficient than just running one? so we talked about a chiller being a couple of compressors or multiple compressors in the chiller. running multiple chillers is only an extension of that to an extent in that, you know, Love if you're running smaller chillers, they may well only have one compressor in each so, and running. Two chillers each with one compressor is pretty much the same as running one chiller with two compressors in it. it's just you've got double, you double up on the pumps and, and the tanks potentially, on how it's designed. When you have multiple chillers, typically you might have a buffer vessel, which all the chillers work upon. so OO otherwise you get into more lag and knee type territory. with a buffer vessel, what it means is that both chills work on chilling. That, that, that main vessel, like your big hectoliter store, a glycol. and depending on what temperature that reach is, the chillers will kick in to correct it back down to the temperature it needs to be. an alternative would be to set up the two chillers at different set points without the buffer tank. And so therefore, when the cooling works, the one chiller works quite merrily. And if the one sugar can't cope. Then the temperature gets too high and the second sugar kicks in. Basically, that would be a way of doing it, if that makes sense. yeah. And that's the key part of running the two chillers, right? That they're not working at the same time unless they need to. So you want run one, running as like a hundred percent, and then when it can't keep up, you have that Yeah. Typically in. then you try and swap them over as well to make sure there's equal usage. But yes, absolutely as you say, because otherwise if you have them running both at the same time, they're both running at essentially 50% capacity and chopping chop out very quickly. Again, being electrically inefficient and all the things we were talking about, putting ng wear on the compressors in the system. Yeah. So how would, do you, how would a brewery now, what's their best way of, assessing the opex or the cost of running their chiller if they're listening to this going, Ooh, I think we might be running it inefficiently. How can they check that out? One of the indicators would be just to see the number of hours the chin is actually running stops you do in an hour. again, I guess that's difficult to do unless you actually sit there and watch it, which, you know, there are more exciting things in life I understand. But, you know, you can get some moisture equipment to do it if required most of the electrical supply, seeing as how it comes on and off. but that would give you a prime indicator if it's coming on and off more than probably six times an hour. you know, you're getting to more to the inefficient end. Yeah. And those energy meters would be a good way as well, right? They could, as you said, you could attach that same energy meter you would use to, to see where your chiller is using at the moment. You could use exactly the same thing to see how much energy it's Yeah, it's, it is an electrical model might be more interesting in that you'd see then when the compressors clicked on and clicked off over time, that's what you're really looking for. An energy meter should show it, but yeah, just a vol meter standard electrician would give you that information. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good way. And then you can, you can then back calculate how much cooling you've used over that week, and then you can work out the COP. yeah. You that takes a little bit more work, but it's not too bad actually. fairly basic You just need to know the formula, the, yeah. to get the output. COP, you need the temperatures. but the one always, the temperatures are fairly easy. You can buy little thermostats off the internet for 30 quid that yeah, allow you to Bluetooth monitors your phone and they'll do your nice graph over 24 hour period quite happily. the tricky bit is always the flow rate and understanding what the flow rate is. a good flow meter is a very expensive item, coffee of 15 quid 2000 pounds, and even then might not be as a, as effective as you want it to be. so, so that, that's tricky. But yes, your chiller when it arrives will normally have a fixed speed pump. So, you can just backtrack it from the, pressure gauge on the pump. The back pressure on the pump would then lead you to believe that the, what the flow rate is, and that's the way we use quite often. Great. yeah, that'll be that. It's really interesting,'cause I think measuring the opex is always a really useful thing to do. and there's just so much room in most breweries, not all, but in most breweries, there's definitely room for improvement on, running the chiller or chillers if you have multiple. and then if you're sizing as well, it would just, it's a really good way of probably calculating a return on investment, as well, if you can see that yours is running inefficiently because it's oversized and you can get a, maybe a smaller one or, you know, a newer one with a multi-step, compressors or an inverter, and then you can, you can see how much you can save. there's the equation for how you calculate chilling power. I don't know. Will you do that sort of stuff? So. definitely, that's the sort of stuff you love. Yeah, let's do it. Basically, as a rule of thumb, it's four times the temperature difference times the flow rate in liters per second, Okay. And that determines and that determines your output cooling power. I'll put cooling power. Okay? Okay. Can you repeat that so it's four times the temperature difference going into and outta the chiller. So if the temperature of the Kant coming into the chiller might be, say, three degrees and the temperature going out might be minus two. So typically the difference might be five as an optimal, times four times the flow rate. actually in kilograms per second. But given that water is roughly one, we can make that roughly Yep. per second. and, that then gives you your power. So if you want a COP, you then take that cooling power and divide it by the electrical input power, and that gives you your CO. There then there are all sorts of metrics that you can compare it to as to whether you're being efficient or not. Yeah. Yeah. what does a, I mean, I, it's all depending on the refrigeration plan, the refrigerant gas, et cetera. But where would you typically expect to see, as you said, one absolutely bad, that's one-to-one. Obviously that's really bad. But what would you expect to be good and what's sort of best in class at best in class you probably just order three. but anywhere two and a half to three is pretty good. it'd be nicer to be three or thereabouts. Yeah. so it actually leads me quite nicely onto to, CapEx versus opex. So everything we've talked about here makes perfect sense, right? You get, you wanna run it efficiently at the loading that you have. You want to have max spec it out. So when you peak, you get what you want. However. Having a multi-step compressor, having a, inverter, I'm gonna assume has a CapEx implication, to it as well. Like how, how much more are we talking? Is it really putting things out? Is it doubling budgets or how does that look in terms of CapEx? need to just come back a little bit and talk about a couple of other things as well. before I tackle that. on the CapEx side, we also have this issue about refrigerant gases. so, so there's a lot of change going on in the refrigeration industry. as the world tries to get rid of ozone layers and get rid of the old style refrigerant gases, move more towards low GWP gases. we've had refrigeration equipment for many years in the uk, and around the world. And 'cause of that, the cost of the existing refrigerant equipment or equipment using existing refrigerants has been driven down pretty low. and it is very cost effective. So when you're looking back, CapEx, probably the cheapest chillers you'll find are running our four 10 A, and, you know, they are efficient and they are a comparatively cheap capital cost, but we're all committed to do away with R four 10 A by 2030, and it'll only be a avail. second it is only secondhand R four 10 A that's available since I think it's 2020. So gradually. the plan is to throttle the markets. There's no more R ten four ten A available and thus get everyone to change onto something else. but basically what I was trying to say is CapEx is cheap for old star chillers with old star refrigerants.'cause we've made lots of them, we know them. There are lots of parts around. You then have all the new style refrigerants coming out where people have had to put RD in to, to develop new compressors, new, new components, which haven't been mass produced in quite the same way. So there is an increasing cost going for a new low GWP chiller. And then a further layer on that is that, you have two, distinct groups. You have the low GWP chillers, which is things like R 4 5 4 BR 5 1 3 A, which are about the 500 GWP mark. Which are getting a big improvement over current, but not quite the end game. and they are more cost effective from a CapEx perspective. They're also tend to be more efficient. They're more akin to the existing R four 10 A. so they would be slightly more preferred. And then the end goal has gotta be a natural refrigerant, which is, currently propane is the, is the favorite for everyone at the moment, which is great. But, it requires special components chose a considerably more expensive, at least probably 20 to 30% more expensive. the GWP of them is three, so they have very little effect on the ozone there. they do tend to be quite efficient, particularly at the sort of temperatures that apparel would be operating at. they're not quite so efficient at the 12 seven, which is the standard we look at, but at the kind of. Plus three minus two. they're a really good alternative as a refrigerant. so that partially answers the question about CapEx versus opex thing. Mm I suppose the point about the OPEX on those is that our four 10 a wallet is currently not too expensive because of legislation will get much more expensive. So in the event you have leaks, it will be more expensive to repair a more difficult repair. the low GWP should be around for a good few years yet, at least 10 to 15 years, if not 20. And so you shouldn't have a problem getting that, and the price of that will stay comparatively low. propane, well, propane used for lots of things. Yeah. Yeah. And then when you're talking about inverters and multi, and, you know, multi-step compressors as well, presumably they add a cost. but at the flexi you're basically building in flexibility to the opex, but or into the running of it so it can run more efficient at lower, mid, and high, but at the same time, that's gonna increase the CapEx, no Yeah, so, so the inverters are quite expensive and a general distrust in the industry about inverters, partly 'cause they haven't been around enough for us to really understand how they're gonna last in the long run. I mean, inverters are very effective what they do, but they are expensive. They need to be specially programmed. I guess our view tends to be, it's another things go wrong, Yeah. Yeah. but so, so we would prefer as a matter of style to, to go with multiple compressors and have capacity steps. So running the compressors at a hundred percent as opposed to having inverter or if you need more flexibility to use a buffer tank to achieve the same goal. so certainly having, a multi compressor chiller as opposed to an inverter driven chiller would be cheaper.'cause it'd be cheaper. I guess the other thing to bear in mind is that there's actually a pump running in each of these chillers pushing that glycol rad. So if you want to use something that's inverter drive, maybe that's a better thing to apply the inverter drive tier to save, Yeah, definitely those pumps can really rack up a lot of energy yes. Yeah. And they're all running 24 7, so yeah. yeah. you've got a seven kilowatt pump running 24 7, you know, you can do the maths on that. It's pretty, pretty expensive to run pretty Okay. yeah, it's, it's always a, it's a really good point, actually inverter on those pumps. or even just there's some logic within the system so that it knows when there isn't demand for glycol that it doesn't need to run. and when there is a demand for glycol, it can switch on. There's, you know, systems like frigid cloud that can Yeah. some really good stuff, that just smarter uses of electricity rather than just having things on 24 7 just for when you Yeah. so we do use variable speed drives in the fans, typically on the chillers, which varies the airflow and, helps manage capacity a little bit in that regard. and again, but that, technology is much more, mature. We know how they work. they go on for years and years, so, so, yeah. But again, it is a premium cost to get a, a variable speed fan. but increasingly becoming the way they're becoming standard. Yeah. Yeah. It's just a classic case of investing a bit, well, investing more CapEx now to reduce the opex later. Yeah. Yeah. and with electricity prices, the way they're in the. yes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's, it is a big point actually. The cost of electricity has driven, the opex into a big problem into a lot of breweries. especially as I said, most breweries, craft breweries, it's about 40% sometimes greater of their total electricity usage. it's a And it's particularly if you've oversized the shit to start with. So we're discussing about how you size this. Yeah. if you're sitting there with a chiller, that's probably two or 300% of what it needs to be. The electricity usage will be based on that two or 300% more than it needs to be. Yeah. and it's a lot. Payback makes a, you know, it is pretty quick. And in some cases we've seen payback on neutrals of less than a year. Yeah. Yeah. Terrifying. I think this is a great time to start talking about heat recovery as Yep. and the pot, just actually the ludicrous potential of the heat recovery of a refrigeration plant. So potentially you can just talk to us about what is heat recovery, how does it look in, in a refrigeration plant, and kind of how it works. So if you go back to thinking about the chiller and the condenser and the evaporator. So you're just moving, cold heat out of a cold tank that you're making colder, and, shoveling it out through the condenser and fan blown air out into ambient air. it is obvious when you think about it that perhaps we should try and do something with that heat. and if you're talking about a heat pump, what a heat pump is doing is just using that air. The, so we have CTH pillars that we stock here, which, will actually do simultaneous heating and cooling. So literally you suck the heat out of a, a something cooling vine, wine va. and then put it into a wine about that's cooking red wine. So very efficient. You're just moving the heat from one place to another. it makes a lot of sense. So when you're talking about heat recovery, all it's trying to do is do the same thing. You just put a little heat exchanger, between the, compressor and the condenser and just trying to get rid of some of that heat preemptively. And there are two different types of heat recovery typically. one is what they call high temperature heat recovery, which is just basically a dumb heat exchanger that sits on that circuit and you would pass water through it and it would heat that water up. And we will typically recover about 35 to 40% of the, cooling, power of the chiller. you can then move it on a stage and put in some controls, and, Put a, some more, more detailed mechanism around it to make sure it's always optimized and you can get up to a hundred percent heat recovery out. So what that means is the chiller, rather than just dumping the heat out through the, radiate the condenser radiator and the fan is actually reusing all that heat for some other purpose. Typically the heat is recovered in the way of, warmer water, for some other process. there is a brewery we deal with who have an issue'cause they're off grid. so heating water for keg washing and the likes is quite difficult. So they will use, heat recovery to heat a large tank of water. Okay. It never gets up to the total temperature required to wash the kegs out, but it gets the water up to 50, 60 degrees. It reduces the amount of oil they have to burn to then heat up the final bit to wash out the cakes and they love it. It, I think you refer to it as a return on investment for a chiller. Who knows? You could have such a thing. But then you get into, to bigger challenges like we had with the vault, which is, when you're talking about reasonably sizable chillers, recovering heat from that chiller, what do you actually do with it? Yeah, it's a, it's a big thing because I think I'm gonna have to give context to this. So it's, it is around like 125 kilowatt chiller. and it's capable of what, a hundred percent Yep, yep. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, effectively to So. like real terms, for a brewer, it was 200 hectoliters of water at around 50 degrees every 14 hours. That is a lot of water. Absolutely. on a chiller that's not that big. Like most breweries of that, you know, most breweries around that size will be having a similar size chiller. Some breweries, I know, 200, 300 kilowatt just to understand, 500. recovered is not just the heat recovered from the cold process, but also the heat recovered from, there's input from electric, so 125 kilowatt chiller, you could potentially be recovering up to 165 kilowatts of heat because it's 125 kilowatts from the cooling. Plus the 40 odd kilowatts that you put in is electric. Yeah, that's, so, I mean it's actually almost too much for brewing, to be honest, but I think you've mentioned it before. There's other options. There's, people have run it like under floor heating, then they've run it for various water processes. looking at the future as well, there is like, as you said, this is perfect for heat pumps as well. This is exactly the sort of like waste heat that's used to heat up water to where a heat pump can start to turn that into, steam in the future, so the working out the ROI on that is return on investment for that is all about it. Eating into your gas usage. If you're using gas, whatever the energy you are using to heat, hot water usually, obviously that's financially a lot less than an electricity unless you are heating with electricity, then it's gonna be an absolute no brainer. and oil et cetera is obviously very expensive, but that's how you calculate that. ROI is just, that's the amount of kilowatts you no longer have to heat gas or electricity or oil. and then you can also work out the carbon savings on that as well because now you, you're no longer burning that gas, you're no longer burning that oil. And that's where a lot of the environmental savings come. and this is really where. craft breweries should be looking to decarbonize their scope one emissions, Like new heating technology just isn't quite there yet, but these are the things that really help reduce that scope One emissions. But I just wanna make, get this like point across as well. heat recovery is not the thing that you can add in after you've brought the chiller. Right. It has to be put in as a part of the original scope. yes, there is a potential to, add in the part heat recovery I was talking about, which is just a dumb, heat exchanger, but it requires cutting into the refrigerant line. So it's not something that's easy or straightforward, but yes, you could do it, but the full heat recovery has to be done at the time, which it was designed and put together again. Yeah, you need to make the decision upfront. And I guess when you're saying that the, the technology is all there to do this currently, that's right. But you need to bear in mind that the heat pump is taking, temperatures up. And if you start at 50 degrees, it will find it much more easy to achieve than 90 degree. Then you start at you 15 degree ambient or whatever tap water is when it comes into the building. so, so people say heat pumps can't do it? Well, the trigger is if you've heat recovered into a tank, for instance, that's at 50 degrees, then it's easy to get that up to 90 degrees than waiting for a heat pump to try and get it from 12 degrees up to 90 degrees. Yeah, and also just talking about COP, which is how they, they work as well. you won't, you'll never see a COP that's worthwhile, if, you know, unless it's and a half, four. And you just won't get that from tap water to anything really with a heat pump. So it does, it always needs, at the moment, it always needs that use of waste heat around the process to heat up, to a temperature that at least it can work with. Yep. Yep. So I mean, we talked, I guess we talked about the mistakes to avoid being oversizing your chiller. also good one I've taken away is, how to make sure that your chiller can manage different loads.'cause it's unlikely that you're gonna be running it a hundred percent. You might be able to, but if so, you have to make sure that's designed in the system Yeah. yeah. and it is why you have to make sure that we're chiller when it's designed we'll manage different loads 'cause it's not gonna be the same. Even the ambient temperature, variance will cause quite a big difference in the load on the chiller. and I understand that no one wants to be there in the middle of July. Tr trying to get there chiller to chill in a 37 degree ambient. You know, Yeah. you need to make sure you cover off that, as well as the more general ambient conditions, which, you know, if you're in Scotland, your average conditions are about 12, 13 degrees ambient. which is very different. Yeah. Yeah. how would you recommend that people assess when they need to upgrade or change their refrigeration system? So you're probably looking to every five or six years, but at the current time there's quite a push to look at it again, because of the extreme cost of electricity and the poor, sizing and design of current systems, a combination of those two can quite often lead to quite a substantial energy saving. And to do some of the things we were talking about, like perhaps just monitoring and seeing how often chiller is running, you know, what sort of output you are getting and how it compares with the design output. All good things to, to look at, to understand its efficiency. and, yeah, normally at least five years you'd run quite merrily on a set of chillers, but I would say now is a good time to look at it again, because of the changes in refrigerant and electricity costs and efficiency. it is particularly a good time to look at it again. Yeah, absolutely. what questions do you think every brewer should ask their refrigeration supplier? so the, what's operation like at part load would be a good. One to start with. So everyone focuses on full load, but let's look at part load as well. Hmm. How efficient is it at 50%, which is where you're likely to be running most of the year? that's quite a key, element. and then the other one would be about, what's the resilience? if this fails, what's the plan? Or if a component of this fails, what's the plan? So quite a number of chillers will have two circuits in them, particular reasonable size. So one circuit confound and the other circuit will work. So that gives you resilience immediately. So, so if one circuit goes down, you are not putting your hair out. If you have a smaller chair that's just a single circuit it goes down, then what's the plan? So yes, we can always get a rental chili to you within 24 hours, typically, but that's an expensive option. Much better to build in, some resilience to start with. much, much better. Yeah. Great. so John is the, how would, so let's talk about this newsletter quickly.'cause there might be some people listening to this who think this is, genuinely really interesting and I'd like to learn more. But, in a more bite-sized way, keeping on top of things. Maybe they're looking at their ch replacing their chiller. And they just wanna stay informed. How do they get hold of your newsletter? What kind of topics do you cover? We just try and keep topical about the things that you would wanna know about if you were a buyer of refrigeration equipment. Changes in the industry, developments in the industry of practical tips as to how to make your chillers work effectively. the importance of, having a good service and maintenance regime. things you can do when your chiller breaks down, which you don't need to call a refrigeration engineer for. I dunno why people were telling people that, but That's why I like you, John. it makes everyone happy. There are things you can do, to help. Before you call a refrigeration engineer and save yourself the big bill, we don't actually like turning up on site and say, oh, the reason is you've got a block filter here, done this yourself. Here's the bill. It's much better if everyone does it to Yeah. Understands what's going on. Great. So where can they, how So subscribe or listen or www. Perfect both. I'll link both in the show notes. There's a lot going on in the show notes this week. lots of newsletters, lots of, educational emails and other things on there. So hopefully additional free information coming out there is, which I think is always really interesting to know. And it's quite nice when things are just sent to you and you don't have to, actively go and look and you can read it when you're commuting or just, when you're just like relaxing a little bit and just have a little read of it. So I think it's always quite digestible that, that style of content for me. Yeah, we're also, looking quite a lot at resilience at the moment. That's our big focus. So we have a resilience audit, which if anyone's interested, we can let you have a copy of the resilience audit. It's 30 questions. You should just be asking yourself to make sure that your chiller is still gonna be around, to try and counter this fact that the chiller just sits there in the back of the factory and works, and then one day it doesn't work, and then everyone's in a panic 'cause they could do it reward's full. You just described 95% of brewers, including myself for many years. I was just like, oh, it's working. I don't need to get, and then all this, it stopped working. Panic. So the biggest cost is always the lost production. Yes. Always, always, always lost production. during fermentation, it's just a nightmare. really hard to counteract a bad fermentation, to be honest. So, yeah, if you get those fermentations rising to like 28 30 and your beer's done, you lost that beer. which is always, that's why, I would be hammering your phone, John, if it was, I'm the exact sort of client you would've really disliked, didn't say a word. And when it goes wrong, call off and be like, John, I need you here in the next hour. which I feel most people are like, it's must be part and parcel of the job, which is why you're giving out these But the, the other aspect on that is, is we have had like lots of other industries real problems over the last few years with general supply chain and spares. hmm. And there's nothing worse than when you go into a site and say. This is broken, and then you go and try and source that part and you find it's on a six month lead time. That's, Yeah. I can say things have improved somewhat over the last year and a bit, but there's no doubt the supply chain is not back to the way it was pre COVID. It's, it's a lot better. It's not back to pre COVID levels. Yeah. Getting on top of it now. Preventative maintenance. These are the keys Sure. to running a, Maybe even holding some spares on site of things that might, be to fail. yeah. Yeah. Great. so John, this is for, this is mainly for my socials, but what are the top three things that you wish every brewer understood about refrigeration? I wish they understood that it was about circulation of water, not necessarily all this fancy stuff. had a reasonably good understanding that we're circulating water and glycols. There are lots of other things that could go wrong as well as the refrigeration system, that we should be, when we spec it, it should be specked against, a normal pattern as opposed to maximum pattern all the time. And, it's the, it is the resilience, resilience and resilience thing. You know, make sure you think about it beforehand as to what you're gonna do when it fails.'cause what it fails, there's precious little time to do anything with it. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. John, is there anything else you'd like to add before we, close this episode off? No, I think that's all. Thanks. I hope that's been worthwhile. I hope there's value to be from that. Okay. I mean, definitely as I said, for me personally when I was going through a lot of this, trying to do the things right way, you helped me out immensely. and I'm also write some guides for CBA sustainability, and I know you helped, proofread my one-on refrigeration. So, they'll be coming out to see the members shortly, I think, in the next couple of months. So, I'll plug those later on when they come out. But yeah, so thanks a lot for that. I really do trust your opinion on everything and for all the tools and the work, the newsletters you do for people, I think that's why I can safely trust you as a good, refrigeration expert and not some of the charlatans that I've had to deal with over the years. So I really appreciate that. So thanks and, thanks a lot for coming on the show, John. Genuinely really appreciate it. So. Well, that wraps up today's episode on refrigeration. A big thanks to John. as I said, one of the good guys in the industry, so I, I respect his opinion on everything, refrigeration. If you liked today's episode or you liked any of the episodes of the Modern Brewer podcast, please do share with your friends, colleagues, anyone who you think might find it interesting. Any engagement on the social media posts is greatly appreciated, as well as hitting that subscribe or follow button, which wherever you get your podcasts from . and that's everything for this episode. I hope you have a great time, and I will catch you on the next episode of the Modern Brewer Podcast.