Brewery Upgrades

Below are descriptions, hints, tips and tricks for the available brewery upgrades

Basic Upgrades

Add fermentation tank - Pretty self-explanatory, adds additional fermentation tanks to your brewery allowing you to ferment multiple beer batches at the same time. The garage brewery can have a total of 2 tanks, Micro 3, and Brewery 4.

Advanced cleaning system - A very popular upgrade that cuts the cleaning time in half for both your fermentation tank and core equipment, for most levels this allows you to brew beer again after 30 minutes instead of an hour.

Efficient burners - Originally designed as a compliment to the advanced "Steam jacketed mash tun" upgrade this option reduces your heating costs by installing thermodynamically tuned and efficient burners in both your mash tun and kettle. This upgrade at least partially offsets the increased heating cost of the steam jacket and is now available at all brewery levels for cost conscious players.

High capacity heat exchanger - Even though it takes under 2 minutes for your wort to cool after the boil, this process seems to take forever. More importantly though is the fact that you beer quality drops steadily as time passes between the boil and the introduction of yeast in the fermenter. The high capacity heat exchanger takes the heat out of the wort much faster letting you get on with the business of selling beer and improving your beer quality at the same time. This is a very popular upgrade. Above the garage brewery level this upgrade requires that "High capacity piping" be installed first.

Upgrade cold storage - One of the earliest upgrades that you will want to install is a larger cooler to store your beer. You can't sell beer if it is out of stock and keeping beer in stock depends on your having a place to keep it fresh. You cannot brew a new batch of beer if your batch capacity exceeds the amount of beer that you can store.

Upgrade dry goods storage - An early upgrade for most players, the increased dry good storage allows you to place larger orders for barley and hops. Advanced players know that to make a profit it is critical to take advantage of the cheaper supplies that are available at the farm rather than purchasing materials at the start of a new batch. And while you can certainly farm all of your own ingredients , why not save yourself some time and take advantage of the the beer drinkers who are willing to help you out with a little hard labor of their own? At the higher levels it can take a really long time to farm all of your own ingredients and this upgrade becomes even more critical.

Advanced Brewery Upgrades

Automated bottling - Only available at the Brewery level and higher this upgrade is designed to keep your beer flowing without interruption. When fermentation is complete on a batch then this equipment will kick in, bottle it for you, and transfer the new beer directly to storage without you having to lift a finger. You can always come back later and see the batch results on the brewery tab. The automated bottler will not work if you are online (for safety reasons ) but it will notify you with an immediate message that your brew is ready for manual bottling. There are a couple other cases where the bottler will not kick in, if finishing your batch would result in you going bankrupt then it will not start, allowing time for existing beer stock/sales to catch up and put you back in the green. Occasionally after a maintenance update your brewery parameters have to be reset, the bottler cannot operate when this happens until after you log in at least once. The auto bottler will always put your batch into your conditioning room if you have space, otherwise it will try to put the batch into cold storage (again if you have space) and if no space in either location then it will leave the batch in the fermenter.

High capacity piping - Available at the Micro Brewery level and higher this is another batch process time saver. This upgrade reduces the valve time it takes to transfer your wort between equipment. By speeding up the transfer to and from the heat exchanger it also increases your beer quality by reducing the opportunity for unwanted microbes to contaminate your wort. Above the garage brewery level this upgrade is a prerequisite for the "High capacity heat exchanger".

Line of credit - Only available at the Brewery level and higher this relatively inexpensive and often overlooked upgrade can save you a lot of money in the long run. If your brew money goes into the red while brewing up a new batch then you will go bankrupt. Without the line of credit upgrade all of your dry good stock will be immediately sold off at bottom level prices to pay off the debt. If you have a lot of money invested in dry goods and especially if you paid full price for these goods then you can take a very large hit to the pocketbook. With the line of credit upgrade a portion of your stock will be sold off just up to the point of solvency and the remaining stock will remain in your storage. The 10% batch output penalty for bankruptcy is assessed with or without the upgrade since the liquidators always take their share.

On-site malting - At the full Brewery level you can install facilities to malt your own barley and greatly reduce the cost of these ingredients. Dry good storage capacity must be maxxed as a prerequisite to installing this upgrade.

Steam jacketed mash tun - The Steam jacketed mash tun upgrade is very expensive but also very popular. Beer quality is highly affected by your ability to keep the temperature in the mash tun close to the optimum level and it can be especially bad to overshoot the target and overheat the mash. A steam jacket allows for some level of protection against mash overheating by venting off heat when the temperatures starts to climb above the optimum. If you find it difficult to manage the burners in the tun then installing this upgrade can greatly increase your beer quality. Heat transfer properties of the jacket also greatly increase your heating costs though, that's why we highly recommend that you install the "Efficient burners" upgrade at the same time or you may just see your profit margins dissapear.

Yeast management system - At the Micro Brewery level and above you can begin to manage your own yeast. Why pay exorbitant prices when you can keep the little buggers alive yourself? All it takes is a little care and feeding. This upgrade is a prerequisite for the "Yeast clean room" upgrade.

Yeast clean room - Only the most advanced and profitable brewers will be able to install a Yeast clean room at the Brewery level and higher. The clean room is basically a sterile laboratory environment to grow and manage various yeast stocks. The clean room increases your brew quality by reducing contamination and unwanted microbes in your yeast cultures. You must have installed a "Yeast management system" as a prerequisite.

Offsite cold storage - At the Brewery level and higher you can obtain off-site warehouse storage that gives you essentially unlimited storage for your beer. The down side is that you will see a small increase in your batch miscellaneous costs to account for rental and transport fees. You must have maximized your local cold storage as a prerequisite.

Offsite dry storage - This is the same as Offsite cold storage but applies to dry goods. The upgrade cost and increase in your batch costs are substantially lower.