A German-German success story continues

Flensburg, 23 May 2025 – That was the day Flensburger Brauerei broke ground on its new brewhouse at the Munketoft 12 site in Flensburg’s old city. The architectural design featuring a showcase brewhouse vividly demonstrates that the technology aimed at reaching the brewery’s sustainability goals deserves a place in the spotlight. A large glass frontage invites passersby to marvel at the big brew kettles, thus making brewing craftsmanship visible and more accessible.

For implementing state-of-the-art technology in their new brewhouse, the brewery from the north of Germany took on board an at least equally tradition-steeped partner from the country’s south: Steinecker GmbH founded back in 1875 at the other end of Germany, at Freising in the foothills of the Alps. This was not the first time that Flensburger had opted for Steinecker: The specialists from Bavaria had also supplied the two existing brewing lines installed in the 1990s. Moreover, the brewery has since 2014 been relying on Steinecker’s Botec F1 control system for automating its processes. So the decision to order the new line from them as well was the obvious choice: “Steinecker, Krones and Flensburger have been collaborating successfully at many points in our company for years now. Before our teams joined forces for the brewhouse, they had already translated filtration and filling lines, plus a number of expansion projects, into shopfloor reality. All of these investments have invariably been focused on sustainable operation, a goal that is once again achieved with the EquiTherm concept for saving primary energy and reducing fossil fuels in the brewhouse. That, plus the good prep work in the project, tipped the scales in favour of Steinecker,” recalls Managing Director Michael Seip. 

Production Manager Enes Erisgen has words of praise for the current collaboration: “Working with the colleagues from Steinecker is just as we’d thought it would be. From project management down to the specialist departments, everyone involved is highly motivated and committed to our shared goal of drawing up the plans for Flensburger Brauerei’s brewhouse in meticulous detail and translating them into shopfloor reality. Communication across the teams responsible for architecture, statics and planning is also exemplary, not least because of the professional expertise and experience our colleagues from Freising can draw upon.”

Smart energy circuits 

The new brewhouse is brimming with technology to the latest state of the art, yielding substantial savings of energy and raw materials for the brewery, as Matthias Pohl from Steinecker’s sales department explains: “Beer-brewing offers abundant potential for energy recovery and the re-use of raw materials, not least because the brewing process requires a lot of temperature changes and the resulting energy differences can be intelligently harnessed at other points with the right technology.” 

It is precisely this principle that is used in Steinecker’s EquiTherm Brew energy recovery system installed in the new brewhouse. The underlying concept is both simple and ingenious: Part of the warm water produced during wort cooling is passed into a central energy storage tank, from where the mashing process is then supplied with thermal energy. 

How much energy can thus be saved? As compared to a brewhouse operating without energy recovery, up to 75 per cent thermal energy and up to 21 per cent electricity (including the power needed for refrigeration in the brewhouse). But that’s not all, not by a long shot! There are plenty of other options for rendering the brewing process more sustainable. 

The most important element for increasing overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is changing the heating medium, using 110°C-hot water instead of steam. The advantages of this low-temperature concept are obvious: Less energy is needed to bring the heating medium up to temperature, and hot water from the central heat storage tank can be used. So the technology is perfectly compatible with the EquiTherm Brew system.

What’s next? 

Having broken ground less then a year ago, the brewery expects Steinecker to already deliver the brewhouse technology in 2026. It will include a ShakesBeer mash tun, a Pegasus C lauter tun and the Stromboli wort boiling system, all of it controlled and monitored by the latest release of the Botec F1 process control system, for a capacity of 540 hectolitres of cold cast wort and twelve brews per day. 

But that’s not the end of the story: Together with Steinecker, Flensburger Brauerei plans to also link up further energy consumers to the central energy storage tank in order to save even more energy by using it efficiently.

A perfect match

Flensburger Brauerei has put its trust in technology from the Krones group family for its filling operation, too: In 2016/17, Krones supplied two glass lines for the brewery’s iconic swing-stopper bottles. Each fills 39,000 containers per hour, ranking them among the world’s fastest for this bottle type. That means almost one million bottles can be handled per day! 

The trifecta of Flensburger Brauerei, Steinecker and Krones consistently demonstrates that with the requisite know-how sustainability, cost-efficiency and quality can be effectively combined for optimum results. The beers from Flensburg are superlative examples of how technical innovations can time and again help to re-invent and improve a product with a thousand years of tradition. And both in Flensburg and in Freising, the teams have always been fully aware that its success is based on the single fact that beer is a natural product.