New Belgium Brewery Improves Reliability and Sustainability with High-Efficiency Pumps

To meet growing demand while maintaining its commitment to sustainability, New Belgium Brewery, a Colorado-based craft brewery, faced significant challenges with its aging infrastructure. They reached out to a local Grundfos distribution partner, Denver Industrial Pumps, for advice on upgrading their cooling system to increase efficiency and reliability. Denver Industrial worked with Grundfos to select a solution with an integrated Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) and industry-leading energy efficiency.

New Belgium Brewery

New Belgium Brewery, headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado, is one of the largest craft breweries in the United States, renowned for its flagship beer, Fat Tire Amber Ale. A Certified B Corporation*, New Belgium Brewery is highly committed to sustainability, upholding strong environmental and social standards, minimizing waste, conserving water and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Reliable Solution

Although the brewery continually invested in cutting-edge technologies, their ammonia and evaporative cooling systems – essential for regulating temperatures during brewing – relied on outdated, inefficient and difficult to maintain pumps. With their original pumps discontinued and production demands at an all-time high – New Belgium Brewery needed a reliable solution to modernize its systems and minimize disruptions.

Denver Industrial recommended Grundfos NBSE end-suction pumps powered by a Grundfos MLE motor with an integrated VFD, as it was an intelligent solution that adapts pump speed according to demand to achieve significant energy savings.

However, New Belgium was unaware of the capabilities of VFD solutions and was just seeking a reliable upgrade to improve system efficiency and uptime. They were skeptical about the ability of MLE to manage controls without the support of a dedicated PLC (Programmable Logic Controller), which is usually required to provide insight about what is always going on in the plant.

To address these concerns, the Grundfos team demonstrated the cascade function and multi-master control for redundant backup with the Grundfos MLE, an integrated VFD and permanent magnet IE5 motor, which is more energy efficient than regular motors. The demonstration convinced New Belgium Brewery’s IT team, and the maintenance manager was impressed by the simplicity of the MLE motor intelligence, insights and controllability, as well as the ease of maintenance offered by the NBSE pumps, where seals can be changed quickly on-site.

With the brewery team on board, four pumps were ordered, and a single-day switchover was scheduled. The installation crew completed piping in the morning, followed by programming and commissioning in the afternoon with support from Grundfos and the local partner.

Compared to traditional installations that require communication cables running back to the PLC from each pump, the cascade functionality of the Grundfos MLE eliminates lengthy cable runs. The setup requires only one wire with three conductors and a daisy-chained communication wire between the four pumps. Programming the cascade operation for all four pumps took just 30 minutes.

Once operational, the system demonstrated seamless performance during flow rate tests. The brewery achieved 100% capacity with three NBSE pumps, leaving the fourth as a redundant backup. Additionally, redundant master controls and pressure sensors ensured fail-safe operation, reducing downtime risks.

For more on Grundfos, https://www.grundfos.com/about-us/cases/intelligent-pump-solutions-helps-new-belgium-brewery-improve-operations?dtid=EM:TM:zbiy8o