Category: Updates and News from PKW

Portland Kettle Works Launches New Coffee Business Unit

Portland Kettle Works, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of the highest quality stainless steel craft brewing and winery equipment, has announced that it will launch a new business unit focused on cutting-edge coffee production and extraction equipment. New products will be exhibited in public for the first time at the Specialty Coffee Expo 2023 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. Oregon on April 21 – April 23, 2023.

PKW’s tradition of providing the highest quality stainless steel craft brewing and winemaking equipment to craft brewers and winemakers now expands to cold brew coffee extraction for coffee brewers across the United States.

“We’ve been producing and delivering great stainless steel cold brew coffee extraction equipment for select clients in the U.S. and Mexico for the past three years and now it’s time for us to broaden our horizons,” said Thad Fisco, founder and President of Portland Kettle Works. “We’re here to supply cold brew extraction to cold brew coffee brewers of all sizes in the rapidly growing cold brew coffee brewing industry.”

“To support this expansion we’ve created a new business unit, Coffea Hardware, with its own website, coffeahardware.com, to showcase our innovative new products and design support services,” continues Fisco, “At the tradeshow cold crew coffee brewery planners and architects will be able to discuss their requirements with Coffea Hardware equipment specialists.”

Portland Kettle Works was founded in 2011 to build the highest quality stainless steel brewing and beverage equipment applications. Since then we have built and installed hundreds of state-of-the-art craft breweries worldwide. Our craft brewers are among the best of the best and they have the gold, silver and bronze medals to prove it. If you’re serious about craft brewing as a business, contact us and we can help you, too. And if you’re located in Mexico or Latin America, click here to visit our Spanish language site.

KB-135 BoochMaster Kombucha Brewery is the world’s first kombucha brewery engineered to “start small” and expand as demand increases

The PKW BoochMaster KB-135 kombucha brewing system is a compact all-in-one steeping and fermentation system for kombucha brewing. Designed for a low entry cost, the BoochMaster KB-135 base system produces 135 liters / 35 gallons per week. Upgrades and accessories can then be added to the base system as required to expand capacity to 3,800 liters / 1,000 gallons per week.

The BoochMaster KB-135 brings “big system” features to boutique kombucha brewing. Now even the smallest kombucha brewers can produce batch after batch of great kombucha while taking advantage of state of the art production features including:

• Precise, highly-efficient, and intuitive operation
• State-of-the-art HMI (Human Machine Interface) controls for precise control.
• Optional agitation mixer on all steeping tanks
• Onboard modulating pump(s) engineered to perform over the long haul with minimal maintenance
• Floor level height platform – no decks or manways required
• Skid-mounted design for ease of installation
• Modular, expandable design
• Both 1 and 2-vessel systems
• Integrated clean-in-place (CIP) sanitary facilities in every tank (requires 3.5BBL or larger tank.
• Precise HMI volume, flow, and temperature controls reduce drift and allow for repeatable recipe performance
• Optional pH detection and control allows the brewer to automate pH regulation during fermentation
• A range of production capacities, scalable to the size of your business

The KB-135 joins the PKW KB-600 large kombucha production brewing system that has become the industry standard, and it can be used to innovate recipes and deliver repeatable results for kombucha breweries, large and small, worldwide at a never before seen low cost.

Learn More About The KB-135 Kombucha Brewery…

So no matter what your kombucha brewing requirements, large or small, you won’t find higher quality kombucha brewing equipment than that produced by the Portland Kettle Works team.

Portland Kettle Works was founded in 2011 in Portland, Oregon USA. We build high-quality stainless steel beverage and brewing equipment. We have built and installed hundreds of state of the art craft breweries worldwide. As a result, our craft brewing clients are among the best of the best. They regularly win beer tasting competitions and they have the gold, silver and bronze medals to prove it. So, if you’re serious about your craft brewing business, contact us so we can help you, too. And if you’re located in Mexico or Latin America, click here to visit our Spanish language site.

New Website Features Open and Closed Top Wine Fermenters, Variable Capacity Wine Fermenters and Wine Totes as Well as Custom Wine Tanks!

Portland Kettle Works, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of the highest quality stainless steel beverage and brewing equipment, has continued its product line expansion by launching Wine Tanks NW (WineTanksNW.com), a website dedicated to providing the highest quality stainless steel wine tanks to winemakers in the Pacific Northwest and across the United States.

Wine Tanks USA breaks stainless steel wine tanks down into four standard categories plus custom wine tanks and fermenters:

• Closed Top Wine Fermenters – Closed top wine fermenters are used for non-oxidative wine fermentation. Ideal for white wines, during fermentation the tank top remains sealed and an inert gas like nitrogen is used to fill any headspace in the tank and displace the oxygen. .
• Open Top Wine Fermenters – Open top wine fermenters are used for oxidative wine fermentation. Used primarily for red wines, during fermentation the open tank gives the winemaker access to the “cap” which is formed from the wine skins on the top of the tank as the wine ferments.
• Variable Capacity Wine Fermenters – Variable capacity wine fermenters can be used for both oxidative and non-oxidative wine fermentation. A “variable capacity” wine fermenter is essentially an open-top wine fermenter fitted with a sliding, sealing lid that can slide up and down the tank to accommodate variable sized batches of wine or the lid can be removed so that the fermenter becomes an open-top fermenter.
• Open Top Stackable Wine Totes – Stackable wine totes are used for oxidative wine fermentation and storage of juice and grapes. 

More Information

Portland Kettle Works newest website is dedicated to providing the highest quality stainless steel winemaking tanks.

Click here to visit WineTanksNW.com

Portland Kettle Works was founded in 2011 to build the highest quality stainless steel brewing and beverage equipment applications. Since then we have built and installed hundreds of state-of-the-art craft breweries worldwide. Our craft brewers are among the best of the best and they have the gold, silver and bronze medals to prove it. If you’re serious about craft brewing as a business, contact us and we can help you, too. And if you’re located in Mexico or Latin America, click here to visit our Spanish language site.

New Website Will Feature Standard Mixing Tank Functions and Applications as Well as Custom Mixing Tanks!

Portland Kettle Works, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of the highest quality stainless steel beverage and brewing equipment, has launched Mixing Tanks USA (MixingTanksUSA.com), a website dedicated to providing mixing tank solutions for standard and custom industrial applications.

Mixing Tanks USA breaks the stainless steel storage and mixing tank business down into three primary categories:

• Standard Tank Functions – Generic tank functions like liquid mixing, dry mixing, heated mixing, cooled mixing, etc. alone or in combination for mixing and storage tank applications.
• Standard Tank Applications – Pre-designed and tested tank configurations of standard tank functions for specific industrial mixing and storage tank applications like beer, wine, kombucha, pharmaceuticals and more.
• Custom Tank Applications – A custom combination of standard tank functions and engineering to meet specific application requirements.

More Information

Portland Kettle Works newest website is dedicated to providing the highest quality stainless steel storage and mixing tanks.

Click here to visit MixingTanksUSA.com

Portland Kettle Works was founded in 2011 to build the highest quality stainless steel brewing and beverage equipment applications. Since then we have built and installed over 300 breweries worldwide. Our craft brewers are among the best of the best and they have the gold, silver and bronze medals to prove it. If you’re serious about craft brewing as a business, contact us and we can help you, too. And if you’re located in Mexico or Latin America, click here to visit our Spanish language site.

New HMI (Human Machine Interface) Options Improve Efficiency, Consistency for Craft Brewers

Portland Kettle Works™ is one of the leading American manufacturers of state-of-the-art stainless steel brewing equipment. We manufacture equipment for craft breweries, wineries, kombucha breweries, coffee extractors and other brewing applications. We now offer our optional new HMI (Human Machine Interface) automation control panels for our brewhouses. These new automated control systems replace the traditional brewery controls of mechanical buttons, knobs and switches with “glass cockpit” style LCD touch screen automation controls to improve brewer’s control and batch-to-batch repeatability over their brewing process.

HMI Improves Control and Batch-To-Batch Repeatability

“We’ve been studying how to best implement HMI for our brewing systems for some time now,” says Thad Fisco, President and Founder of Portland Kettle Works. It’s not enough to just be trendy; we demand that it be as absolutely as reliable and effective as all of our system components. We took the time to do it right.”

HMI automation offers brewery operators a number of advantages over traditional manual brewery controls:

• Increased brewing process precision
• Better control over brewing process
• Better batch-to-batch repeatability
• Lower batch production costs
• Save recipes
• Automated controls for better brewhouse safety

Using HMI automation can improve brewery operations and the beer they brew.

More Precise Control

With HMI automation brewers can control their brewing with much greater precision than with mechanical controls. Times and temperatures can be precisely set and accurately monitored to ensure optimum brewing performance. Even better, process settings and recipes can be recorded and saved so that batch-to-batch brewing variability can be virtually eliminated.

Reliable, Repeatable Performance

“One of the most significant aspects of using PKW HMI automation controls is repeatability,” continues Fisco. “Brewhouses equipped with HMI automation controls can record and remember the precise times and temperatures of each step in the brewing process. This lets brewers save their recipes and repeat them time after time; recipes can even be copied by breweries with multiple locations or exchanged with other brewers.”

Plus, from a business standpoint, backing up recipes using HMI eliminates concerns that if a brewmaster leaves unexpectedly for any reason all of the brewery’s best recipes may leave with him or her.

Suitable for Retrofit on Currently Installed Systems

“High on our list of development priorities was to ensure that our newest HMI automation control panels could be retrofitted onto existing Portland Kettle Works breweries,” continues Fisco. “This allows our brewers to perform a brewhouse “tune-up” and gain all the benefits of using HMI automation controls without having to upgrade their breweries to all new equipment.”

In addition to upgrading PKW equipment installations, PKW engineers may even be able to adapt HMI automation controls to brewing equipment manufactured by other equipment manufacturers.

Special Upgrade Offer

To introduce the amazing capabilities of PKW’s new HMI automation control panels to current brewery owners and prospective new brewers, PKW is making an amazing offer: between July 1 and December 31, 2020* upgrade any new brewery system purchased from PKW from manual controls to HMI automation controls FOR FREE! This can save brewers as much as $25,000!!

For more information on PKW HMI just click here for the details.

*This offer subject to modification or withdrawal without notice.

Portland Kettle Works™ was founded in 2011 to build the highest quality stainless steel brewing and beverage equipment applications. Since then we have built and installed over 300 breweries worldwide. Our craft brewers are among the best of the best and they have the gold, silver and bronze medals to prove it. If you’re serious about craft brewing as a business, contact us and we can help you, too. And if you’re located in Mexico or Latin America, click here to visit our Spanish language site.