📍 Location: Yantai, China
⚙️ Annual Output: 2 million liters
Founded by a group of regional entrepreneurs, Yantai YeE Brewery set out to create a premium, locally rooted craft brand for Shandong and northern China. Located in an urban industrial park near Yantai’s coastal logistics areas, YeE aims to combine coastal-inspired beer recipes with industrial-scale reliability — delivering consistent, high-quality beer to local distributors, retailers, and taprooms across the province.
The Challenge
- Zoning and Regulations: Chinese laws require breweries to be located in designated industrial zones, so site selection and permitting were critical. The project needed to comply with local policies on production volumes and safety.
- Utility Provisioning: Brewing at this scale demands vast amounts of water, steam, power, and compressed air. Ensuring uninterrupted, high-volume utilities in the brewery was a challenge. The plant design had to include boilers, chillers, and water treatment for continuous operation.
- Production Consistency: Maintaining craft beer quality at multi-thousand-ton output is difficult. The brewery needed advanced controls to ensure each batch meets flavor and quality standards, avoiding batch-to-batch variability.
- Space Efficiency: Fitting a large brewhouse, dozens of fermentation tanks, and a complete packaging line into a limited footprint required careful layout planning. Efficient use of floor space was essential to accommodate future expansion.
- Labor and Automation: Skilled brewers and technicians are relatively scarce. The brewery aimed for a highly automated process to reduce manual labor, increase safety, and allow less-experienced staff to run the plant.
- Energy Efficiency: The founders emphasized sustainability. Designing an energy-efficient operation – recovering heat and minimizing waste – was a top goal to control costs and support green credentials.
Our Solution
Tiantai delivered a turnkey brewery solution tailored to YeE’s needs. The solution combined proven industrial brewery design with advanced automation and sustainability features.
- A high-capacity, 100HL 5-vessel brewhouse features a large mash tun, lauter tun, wort holding tank, kettle, and whirlpool, all of which are fully jacketed for precise temperature control.
- 60000L fermenters*10
- 40000L fermenters*10
- 20000L fermenters*10
- 60000L BBTs*1
- 40000L BBTs*1
- 40000L BBTs*1
Dozens of tanks are fully insulated and jacketed, allowing for the simultaneous processing of multiple batches. This cellar enables year-round production without downtime.
- 2000L brewhouse CIP system and 5000L cellar CIP system were installed to automate the cleaning of tanks and lines, ensuring hygiene with minimal labor.
- Tiantai also supplied boiler systems, glycol chillers, and an integrated water-treatment plant.
- Packaging Line: 3 complete canning/bottling lines were delivered, including filler, labeler and case packer. These lines handle high throughput, packaging beer into cans and bottles to meet market demand.
- Automation & Controls: We installed a PLC control system linking the brewhouse, fermenters, and packaging line. Sensors and controllers monitor every process step, enabling fully automatic brewing schedules and giving managers a single interface for the entire plant.
- Energy Recovery: The system includes thermal recovery elements to save energy. For example, wort boilers and heat exchangers capture hot vapors to preheat brewing water, reducing fuel use.
Part of the equipment was fabricated on-site, in parallel with factory production, which speeds up equipment delivery and reduces transportation risks. Our technical team collaborated closely with the brewery during engineering. A remote inspection and system commissioning were performed via video conference before shipping.
On-Site Commissioning: A Tiantai installation team worked on-site to set up the system. A senior project engineer coordinated with local contractors, trained brewery staff, and oversaw the first brewing trials. This hands-on support ensured a smooth handoff and quick start-up.
Results
- Reliable annual output: The plant achieved its target of 2 million liters with a stable batch rhythm and planned packaging throughput.
- More consistent product quality: Automation of key steps (mash profiles, temperature control, fermentation schedules) reduced batch variability and improved QA pass rates.
- Labor efficiency: Routine tasks are automated, allowing staff to focus on process control and new product development.
- Lower operating intensity: Insulation and heat-recovery measures reduced fuel and hot-water demand; utility buffering and redundancy cut unplanned downtime.
- Faster time-to-market: The matched packaging line allowed the brewery to rapidly fill orders for regional distributors and OEMs, supporting a focused domestic rollout across Shandong and adjacent provinces.
Partnership for the Future
Tiantai’s relationship with YeE goes far beyond installation. We will continue to support the brewery as it grows. Major future initiatives include:
- Ongoing Support: Tiantai provides regular technical service, spare parts and software updates. Our service team is always ready for maintenance and quick troubleshooting. This long-term support ensures the brewery runs at peak performance.
- Expansion preparedness: The brewery is prepared to expand its capacity as demand grows. Additional fermenters or filling lines can be added; Tiantai will supply and integrate these equipment to fit the existing plant. Our flexible design makes expansion simple and easy.
- Innovation Collaboration: As the brewery develops new beer recipes or product lines, we will assist in adapting equipment and processes. Joint R&D in process adjustments or efficiency upgrades will keep the brewery competitive.
This cooperation is based on mutual benefit. With over 24 years of expertise in the brewing industry, Tiantai is committed to helping this brewery thrive. We look forward to many more years of collaboration as the brand continues to grow.