Technical Session 15: Cleaning & Packaging Session
Eric J Samp, MillerCoors, Golden CO USA
Co-author(s): Eric Maskwa, MillerCoors, Milwaukee, WI, USA; Chaz
Benedict, Hach Company, Loveland, CO, USA; Kendal Nichols, MillerCoors,
Eden, NC, USA
ABSTRACT: Protecting beer from the deleterious effects of
oxygen is critical for ensuring flavor stability in packaged beer, thus
brewers strive to not only control oxygen pickup during beer processing
but also oxygen entrained during packaging operations. However, for
non-hermetically sealed containers such as bottles, it is known that
oxygen will ingress into the headspace over time. Knowledge of how much
oxygen permeates across the closure could provide brewers with the
ability to detect problems with crowner operations or identify other
issues associated with closure applications, yet today methods are
scarce or limited for breweries to utilize. Laboratory based methods do
exist but are limited in that evaluations cannot be done on production
scale samples; therefore, brewers cannot troubleshoot issues on their
own crowners/cappers or evaluate alternatives to cap/crown modifications
with their own fillers under normal operating conditions. We have
developed a novel technique that can be employed on fillers under normal
operating conditions. The test method can be carried out with any
package oxygen analyzer and provides relative results to the amount of
oxygen that permeates into the container. This paper will discuss the
method and review some case studies illustrating the impact of process
changes on air ingress results. The case studies will include 1)
evaluation of oxygen scavenging liners, 2) optimization of top-load
force on a closure system, and 3) evaluation of variation between
closure elements on a bottle filler. The results from these studies
agree with the anticipated outcomes, thus proving the method produces
results that are meaningful for breweries.
Eric Samp is a
quality engineer/senior statistician for MillerCoors working in the
Corporate Quality Organization. He holds a Ph.D. degree in applied
statistics from the University of Northern Colorado and an M.S. degree
in brewing and distilling from Heriot Watt University. Eric is a CQE and
CQM from the American Society for Quality and a diploma brewer from the
IBD. He is also a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt and serves on
the MBAA Technical Quarterly and JIB editorial review boards. Eric is also a recipient of the ASBC Eric Kneen Memorial Award (2001 and 2011).
VIEW PRESENTATION 53