South Korea's biggest craft brewery uses systems from Krones and Steinecker for brewing and filling

Children are bound to grow up. And the same appears to be true of many craft breweries around the world. It certainly is true of Sevenbräu, also known as 7Bräu. Since its founding 20 years ago – in 2003 –, as a small alehouse in the Gangseo district of Seoul, it has grown into South Korea’s biggest craft brewery. The newest of its three production plants is the greenfield brewery in Iksan-si in the province of Jeollabuk-do. For this facility, Sevenbräu contracted Krones and Steinecker, the beer expert of the Krones Group to install the entire brewhouse, the cold block and the can filler.

Known nationwide for its wheat beer

It wasn’t until 2011 that Sevenbräu officially entered the craft brewing market, under the leadership of founder Kim Kang Sam, having been the first small company in Korea to obtain a brewing license. The brewery initially distributed its beer in kegs.

The company gained national attention in 2020, when it launched the Gompyo brand, which was a huge success across the country. The wheat beer was a collaboration between Sevenbräu, Korea’s biggest convenience store chain CU and Daehan Flour Mill. The beer was produced using locally grown wheat and with three main flavors: passion fruit, peach and pineapple.

Most importantly, Gompyo was produced with unique style of Belgium Saison yeast instead of commonly used Weizen yeast. The label design was inspired by Daehan’s flagship flour brand, Gompyo, which is easily recognized in South Korea by its signature polar bear logo (“gom” means bear in Korean).

New brewhouse

The machines and equipment of the new brewhouse include:

• Three malt intake stations for silo goods and one for bags
• Three 30-ton malt silos
• Dry mill rated at 1,600 kilograms per hour
• Pre-masher rated at ten tons per hour
• CombiCube with a batch size of 100 hectoliters, consisting of:
  • ShakesBeer mash tun
  • Lauter tun
  • Wort kettle with external boiler and condenser
  • Whirlpool
• Three hops dosing containers
• Wet spent grains silo
• Trub tank
• Wort cooler
• CIP system

For now, the brewhouse is designed to produce three different beers: wheat beer, lager and IPA. The IPA is brewed with a wort concentration of 20 degrees Plato, but only with 72 hectoliters of hot wort. The CombiCube consists of pre-assembled modules that can be particularly quickly installed and put into operation.

Fermentation and maturation cellar

• Yeast propagator
• Dry-hop doser
• Carbonation plant
• Blender
• Dosing system
• Filtrate buffer tank
• Water degassing plant with buffer tank
• Sterile air supply
• Dealcoholization system for five hectoliters per hour
• Botec F1 process control system

The three different yeast strains for the three beers can be cultivated in a propagator and kept in a yeast storage tank. Six days are calculated for fermentation in the 17 tanks (with net volumes of 100 to 600 hectoliters each) and another eight days for maturation. From there, a total of four bright-beer tanks of corresponding 100 to 600 hectoliters’ volume supply the beers to the filler, which is designed to handle 150 hectoliters per hour. For the cellar area, we also installed a new CIP system.